Autism Spectrum Disorders in the College Composition Classroom : Making Writing Instruction More Accessible For All Students [1 ed.] 9780874620733, 9780874620726

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autism spectrum disorders in the college composition classroom

autism spectrum disorders in the college composition classroom making writing instruction more accessible for all students Edited by

Val Gerstle & Lynda Walsh

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Autism spectrum disorders in the college composition classroom : making writing instruction more accessible for all students / edited by Val Gerstle & Lynda Walsh. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-87462-072-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-87462-072-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. English language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching (Higher) 2. Autistic people— Education (Higher) 3. Learning disabled—Education (Higher) I. Gerstle, Val, 1954- II. Walsh, Lynda, 1971PE1404.A93 2011 808’.0420711—dc23 2011034619

© 2011 Marquette University Press Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201-3141 All rights reserved. www.marquette.edu/mupress/

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Contents Lynda Walsh Introduction Autism Spectrum Disorders in College Composition ~ 7 Section I Accommodation 1 Marcia Ribble Basic Writing Students with Autism in the College Classroom ~ 15 2 Katherine V. Wills “I just felt kinda invisible”: Accommodations for Learning Disabled Students in the Composition Classroom~ 35 3 April Mann Structure & Accommodation: Autism and the Writing Center ~ 45 4 Lynda Walsh & Cheryl Olman Recommended Approaches to the Neuroimaging Literature on Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) for Teachers of Writing ~ 75

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Autism Spectrum Disorders in the College Composition Classroom Section II Pedagogy 5 Kim Freeman Channeling the Enthusiasm: Two Narratives of Teaching Students with Asperger’s Symdrome in Writing & Literature Classes, with Questions & Reflections ~ 89 6 Val Gerstle Reaching the College Composition Student with Autism through the Cartoon-Enhanced Classroom ~ 99 7 Muriel Cunningham Helping Autistic Students Improve Written Communication Skills through Visual Images ~ 123 8 Jennifer McClinton-Temple “Well, Not Exactly”: Asperger’s & the Integration of Outside Sources ~ 137 About the Authors ~ 144 Index ~ 147

Introduction Autism Spectrum Disorders in College Composition

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Lynda Walsh

he Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have recently reported surprising evidence that as many as one in 110 American children may be diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2009). Increasing numbers of these children will be going on to matriculate at universities around the country, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education (Farrell 2004). Although precise quantification of this increase is difficult due to privacy concerns and lack of formal diagnoses, college instructors are starting to recognize more students with symptoms characteristic of ASD in their classrooms—particularly at technical universities, which specialize in subjects that students with ASD often excel in. At one such university in the Southwest United States, 12 out of an entering class of 282 freshmen, or 4.25%, were formally diagnosed with an ASD in Fall 2006. Acquiring good communication skills is a key to the success of these high-functioning students with ASD. One of the first “gateway” courses they enroll in at the university, in fact, is freshman composition. Passing a sequence of these communication-intensive courses is a graduation requirement at every university and is sometimes prerequisite to beginning major coursework. Unfortunately, the sociallyintensive college composition classroom can be a particularly difficult environment for the student with ASD, who can have real problems working in groups, empathizing with potential audiences, and managing complex tasks such as constructing a lengthy research paper. Exacerbating this stressful situation, many of these students are also

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diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorders (OCD) and/or Tourette’s syndrome, both of which can produce unorthodox behavior that disrupts the classroom environment, sometimes within minutes of the first session of the semester. These developments pose a special challenge to composition instructors. Current ADA guidelines simply require that students with ASD be given extra time on assignments and tests. Those guidelines are inadequate for ensuring these students’ success in a composition classroom. Further, the institutions matriculating these students often offer inadequate academic and social support for them, an oversight which places an additional burden on the instructor. Finally, since this is such a new dilemma, there is little literature designed specifically to support college composition instructors of ASD students. In 2004, in response to the matriculation of several ASD freshmen at my home institution and to the lack of resources for helping them pass first-year composition, Lynda Walsh put out a call for papers for a panel at the 2005 Conference on College Composition and Communication (4C’s) on ASD in the composition classroom. The response was overwhelming, and from the many abstracts submitted, Walsh culled two panels; the first panel engaged administrative and other issues that arise in accommodating students with high-functioning ASD in college composition classes, while the second panel proposed specific pedagogical interventions based on experience “in the trenches.” The panels were an unqualified success. One attendee, herself diagnosed with ASD, commented that she had been attending 4C’s for 10 years, and ours was the most useful panel she had participated in. This edited volume collects the papers presented at the 2005 4C’s panels on ASD and composition, with a few additions and substitutions authored by other experienced colleagues. Far from final solutions, these papers are primarily reports from the trenches that offer suggestions based on personal experience and corroborated by current educational and neuroscientific literature on ASD. They also sketch an outline of the kind of research that scientists and scholars need to do (and do quickly) to help the growing population of mainstreaming ASD students at the college level. The ideal scenario painted by these papers is not one of disciplining ASD students to behave “normally”; rather, it is one in which the unique abilities of ASD students can productively transform the traditional composition classroom by

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breaking its margins and multiplying its perspectives in order to make writing education more accessible for all. The first group of chapters in this volume addresses accommodation of students with ASD in the wider context of the university—including work in writing and tutoring centers and work that educators do to inform themselves about ASD outside the academy’s walls. The first chapter, “Basic Writing Students with Autism in the Composition Classroom,” by Marcia Ribble, sets the tone for the volume by putting the challenge of ASD in perspective as a wake-up call, a sharp reminder that all of our college composition students need intentional, respectful, flexible support in the writing classroom. Ribble reports on a case study of an autistic student who succeeded in passing a basic writing course at the University of Cincinnati with the strategic assistance of UC’s Center for Access and Transition. She then places the case study in the context of changing academic perceptions of “disability” over time. The second chapter in the accommodation group, “‘I just felt kinda invisible’: Accommodations for Learning Disabled Students in the Composition Classroom,” is contributed by Katherine Wills from Indiana University-Purdue, Columbus. She reviews the case of an ASD student who received inconsistent care at her campus. She finds that lack of entitlement to crucial data about the student’s needs created a culture of frustration and misinformation. Wills’ focused interview with the student produces suggestions for future administrative approaches. April Mann, the Writing Center Director at the University of Miami, contributes “The Structure of Accommodation: Asperger’s in the Writing Center,” in which she explains how, at the University of Miami’s Center for Autism-Related Disorders (CARD), psychologists work with parents and professionals to help students with developmental disorders achieve success and independence. Within classrooms at the University of Miami, there has been little discussion of the types of accommodations that might be required to meet the needs of this population. This paper discusses how the University of Miami Writing Center is working with CARD to support students with autism-related disorders. The final paper in this section, “Recommended Approaches to the Neuroimaging Literature on Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) for Teachers of Writing,” steps outside the academy to address the popular

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scientific articles that composition instructors are often tempted to turn to for information on ASD when they lack institutional support—a common problem. Lynda Walsh from the University of Nevada, Reno, and Cheryl Olman from the University of Minnesota combine their expertise in composition pedagogy and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), respectively, to establish criteria for assessing reports on brain-imaging studies of autism and to suggest ways of applying the most solid of the recent findings to teaching writing to students with ASD. The second group of chapters presents hands-on, tested pedagogical interventions for successfully integrating students with ASD in the composition classroom. Kim Freeman from Northeastern University opens the section with her paper “Curbing the Enthusiasm? The Challenges of Helping Students with Asperger’s Syndrome in the Composition Classroom.” Freeman recounts two case studies of her experience teaching composition to Asperger’s students; the first experience was unsuccessful but the second ended much better. The author uses these narratives to support her analysis of these pedagogical successes and failures, along with documented research on helping Asperger’s students. She concludes that in the most successful pedagogical situations, the energy and intelligence of Asperger’s students can be productively channeled to benefit all the students in the composition classroom. The second pedagogy chapter, “Reaching the Autistic Basic Writing Freshman through the Cartoon-Enhanced Classroom” by Val Gerstle from the University of Cincinnati, is a lively and insightful look at unconventional means to helping ASD students overcome their resistance to writing. Gerstle uses cartoons to teach topics such as word choice and sentence structure: she finds the humor of the cartoons helps warm a classroom that could otherwise be chilled by ASD students’ unconventional social behaviors; also, the strong visual element taps into the expressive strength for many ASD students, empowering them to feel on par with their peers. Another exploration of visual modes of instruction, Muriel Cunningham’s paper “Helping Autistic Students Improve Written Communication Skills through Visual Images,” focuses on the use of print advertisements in the composition classroom to teach a communication skill that is extremely difficult for most ASD students: audience analysis. Using the exaggerated and simple imagery of the

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ads, Cunningham is able to encourage her students to recognize ritualistic expressions of emotion and attitude, explicit markers that help literally-minded students succeed in reading their audiences. Finally, Jennifer McClinton-Temple’s paper, entitled “Well, Not Exactly: Students with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) and the Integration of Outside Sources,” reviews the case of an AS student at King’s College, who is a “lyrical, inviting writer.” However, when required to quote outside sources, this student’s normally fluid writing process broke down. McClinton-Temple reviews the strategies she used, such as hyperlinks, to help the student integrate the words of others into her prose without losing her own voice and rhythm. Although this is just a beginning, all of us who have contributed articles to this book have done so because we feel strongly about helping students with ASD succeed, and because we wish a book like this had been out there when each of us welcomed our first ASD student into our writing classroom. We would like to thank the 4C’s for giving the impetus and opportunity to begin this important work; in particular, we extend thanks to the 2005 convention chair, Duku Anokye, and her assistant Eileen Maley, for extra scheduling help to present the sister panels as a temporal as well as thematic unit. We would also like to thank Lori Genetti, Ellen Taber, and Teresa Taber-Doughty for their panel presentations and support of this project. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge Andrew Tallon, our editor at Marquette University Press, for his faith and persistence in bringing this crucial volume of experience to light.

References Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2009. Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders—Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, United States, 2006. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 58 (ss10):1-20. Farrell, E. F. 2004. Asperger’s confounds colleges. Chronicle of Higher Education 51 (7) : A35.

Section I Accommodation

1 Basic Writing Students with Autism in the College Classroom

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Marcia Ribble

rom February 21-28, 2005, The Today Show devoted time to a discussion of the sudden increase of children with autism. For many adults, this was the first time they became aware of the seriousness of the number of children who have autism spectrum disorders. I was one of these adults. I had known some families who had a child with autism, but prior to The Today Show series, I hadn’t known that there were so many autistic children, or that some children with autism may be able to go to college. According to the TV reporters, some people with autism will arrive in college after having a significant number of years of treatments that will allow them to live fairly normal lives. Others may arrive needing a lot of help to achieve success, but the reality is that they will arrive in ever-increasing numbers. We must be prepared to work with these students because those of us who teach Basic Writing and Freshman Composition are often the first line where college students are shown an open door—or where they could encounter a door slammed in their faces. Along with my discussion of the cases of students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), I will also discuss the cases of students with other disabilities, with the goal of demonstrating that these interventions will improve instruction for all students. Why mention basic writing specifically when talking about students with autism spectrum disorders? As I will discuss later, many students who have ASD diagnoses will demonstrate a wide variety of learning issues, some of which are not about writing directly, but rather corollary issues that can significantly impact students’ writing. For example, many writing teachers ask students to work together in groups. ASD students will often have problems with social interactions, such that

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group work can be difficult for them, and for their group mates. If they are driving the rest of the group crazy with their mono-focused intensity, they are often poorly equipped to notice that situation and remediate it. They may also decide that the only topic they are interested in and will write about is steroid use in baseball players. So they may then write all their papers on that topic regardless of what the assigned topic might be. Another issue for ASD writers is often the inability to sustain focus even at the sentence level. So the sentence may begin on one topic and suddenly veer off on an entirely unrelated topic. These and other issues may result in low scores in writing assignments and eventual placement in basic writing classes, even when they have scored well on entrance exams. Many of the teachers in college who deliberately specialize in basic writing, have an expert level of professional knowledge and experience in dealing with students as individuals with many varied needs. This may not be the case in all basic writing classrooms, nor in regular composition classes, but those experts are more likely to be teaching basic writing. Why the sudden interest in autism? As the Center for the Study of Autism reported, California has experienced a recent and very dramatic increase in the number of children with autism. In figures released in 2003, the number of children with autism increased 31% in the period from 2001-2002. In 2003 when the article was written, 81% of the children with autism had been born after 1980 and 66% of those with autism were between the ages of 3 and 13 (Center for the Study of Autism 2003). This data is not true of California alone. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of autism in this country continues to rise, and on February 8, 2007, the CDC issued a press release with data on autism. Their data from a national survey put the rate at approximately 6.7 of 1000 children or 1 in 150 children. The CDC’s old “estimate of the prevalence of autism was four to five per 10,000 children. More recent studies… have indicated that there is a range of ASD prevalence between 1 in 500 children and 1 in 166 children,” and this new study shows further increases. CDC Director Julie Gerberding notes that “our estimates are becoming better and more consistent, though we can’t yet tell if there is a true increase in ASDs or if the changes are a result of our better studies. We do know, however, that these disorders are affecting too many children” (CDC 2007).

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On February 25, 2007, the journal Nature Genetics released online results of a huge study of autism conducted by Yale expert Fred R. Volkmar, M.D., associate Ami Klin and a consortium of scientists around the world (“over 120 scientists from over 50 institutions”) called the Autism Genome Project (AGP). They reported a highly significant discovery of a genetic link to autism. According to Klin The concerted effort of multiple agencies bringing together numerous research institutions has led to a new wave of genetic discoveries in autism that markedly change the landscape of knowledge about this highly prevalent disorder. The discovery of genes associated with autism and their interactions needs now to set in motion an even stronger effort to develop new pharmacological treatments to change the natural course of this highly heterogeneous family of disorders of socialization.

Nature Genetics reported that researchers identified a gene, neurexin 1, that may affect autism and its development, and said that researchers are also looking at a section of chromosome 11. It is thought by these researchers that up to 6 primary genes and 30 other genes may potentially play a role in autism. This information was also reported in a press release from Yale University, along with a second press release noting that the autism research team headed by Fred R. Volkmar, M.D., has received a $3.5 million NIH Grant to continue their studies (Yale 2007). That means the groundswell of teenagers with autism is just about to begin to enter their pre-college and college years. So at first we will have only a few students in college who have autism, but before long and as treatments improve that few will become many students. With our population at 300 million now and expected to increase to 400 million in only a handful of years, that means 1.5 million of the children born this year will have autism or one of the other autism spectrum disorders and need special help to make a good life for themselves and their families. If the problem continues to spread at the rate of 31% like it did between 2001 and 2002 in California, the problem could quickly become one of geometric proportions (Center for the Study of Autism 2003). Not long before The Today Show on autism aired, a student with autism arrived in my classroom. I didn’t know what his problem was, only that he wrote strangely structured papers, talked nonstop about his ideas without awareness that other students were getting tired of

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Autism Spectrum Disorders in the College Composition Classroom

listening to him, and seemed to be quite shy because he wouldn’t establish eye contact with me, or with the other students. Then I was told that he has autism. At that point, I didn’t know much about autism, so I was glad for having the information presented by The Today Show and its experts. There I learned that many of the children are quite bright, but may have non-academic behavioral and psychosocial problems that can inhibit a strong and positive performance in the classroom, but not much beyond that. So I began to research the issue and discovered that there is almost no information available within the field of composition about teaching writing to students with autism, even though many of them are coming to college today, and some like Temple Grandin are making their way through to acquisition of a PhD (Grandin, “Genius” 2001). Because of the huge numbers of students with autism coming, it is particularly important for us to know how to work with these students who may have special needs, given that at many higher education institutions students are not required to reveal their status, nor are the people in our disability offices required to reveal what problems the students are having. This puts faculty in the position of becoming mind-readers and/or untrained diagnosticians. We must intuit both what the problem is and what kinds of assistance will help the students with autism to succeed. The disability folks can only tell us that student A is allowed extra time to take a quiz, or that student B can have help from a note-taker in class. For those of us who teach writing, this is close to telling us absolutely nothing, because our students seldom need to take notes and students occasionally take quizzes, but the grading is primarily done based on students’ written work. Students can go to tutors in the disability office for help with their writing, but those tutors are not trained to teach writing. With as many as 1 in 150 children being diagnosed with autism or one of the spectrum of autistic disorders today (CDC 2007), students with autism may end up having the door to higher education slammed in their faces, simply because there will be so many of them to teach, with so few college teachers trained to teach them. They are a challenging group of students, because they have so many different types of issues. For example, those students with autism with auditory processing problems may exhibit “anxiety or confusion in social situations, inattentiveness, and poor speech comprehension” (Edelson, “Learning” 2007). When students are not characterized as deaf, who would guess

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that they can hear sounds but not accurately interpret them? Their ears are fine, but Bauman and Kemper found that these students have a problem not with information transfer from the ears to the hippocampus, but within the hippocampus for processing and then transference to long term memory. At the time of Bauman and Kemper’s studies (1994), it wasn’t clear whether the problem was in interpreting data from the senses or in transferring the outcomes of interpretation to the cerebral cortex for long-term storage. Many children and adults with autism do not have this problem at all and can hear and record audio information. Edelson explained that this means that no training programs work for all students, so people who teach students who have autism need to be very aware of what will work for their students—not as groups or classes of individuals—but as individuals who have fairly unique needs. Education has always been about teaching to the middle group of students, expecting the good students to forage for additional stimulus on their own, and expecting that students at the lower end of the spectrum will fail. This is in direct contradiction to the beliefs most of us who teach basic writing have about students and their right to learn. Since Mina Shaughnessy started the field of Basic Writing in 1977, we have spent the last three decades fighting to assert that most children and adults have the right and the ability to learn to read and write, to become literate humans contributing to American culture. Despite all kinds of barriers put in our way, we continue to argue that the education which adult literacy makes possible is a basic human right. We are re-entering the fray, having proven that children and adults with dyslexia can be taught to read and write, that children and adults who are second language learners can be taught to read and write academic English, that children and adults who speak a non-academic dialect of English can be taught to read and write academic discourse, that people with handicaps can be taught despite their handicaps, and often even be re-taught to read and write after brain injuries, and now we are again arguing the case for teaching students with Autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, and other Autism Spectrum Disorders to do college level reading and writing, despite some of these students’ learning issues. Adams, Edelson, Grandin, and Rimland (2004) note that one of the most important changes we need to make when dealing with students who have had a diagnosis of autism is to understand that “autistic individuals have the potential to grow and improve.” This means needing

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to confront and challenge those professionals who believe that there is nothing that can be done to help these students to live more functional lives. Adams and his colleagues argue that children with autism can, nonetheless, grow up “to live happy and productive lives.” For college teachers to work effectively with this group of students they need to believe that the kind of writing that some of these students produce is a symptom, not a verdict. For too many years there have been faculty members, administrators, and the general public who believed that students with autism, or any other problem with learning to read and write, cannot learn, cannot function socially, and cannot find gainful employment, all of which are being shown to be false assumptions. In addition, as Temple Grandin has pointed out, many students now being diagnosed as having autism were formerly labeled as intellectually gifted, but a little weird. They often found a mentor or mentors who could help them to negotiate their way through higher education’s minefields. The mentors might have had similar kinds of social problems, and the same kinds of obsessive focus on their work, but sometimes they just recognized skills when they saw them and were less concerned with peripheral issues like eye contact. Grandin has voiced concerns that these students may now be blocked from careers they could readily achieve, by being placed into courses and careers where they don’t fit, or which don’t begin to realize each individual’s real personal potential (“Genius”2001). I was a young adult with children of my own when the first desperate, but determined parents began to argue that the doctors were wrong about children with Down’s Syndrome. At that time, which was the early 60s, parents were still being told that their Down’s children would never learn to walk, talk, or feed themselves, and that these children should be sent to institutions where they would likely die at an early age. I remember well those first brave parents who refused to accept that as a truth about their beloved babies. They fought furiously to change the laws to give their offspring the right to an education with teachers who had been taught to help these special children learn. Those babies learned to sit up, to crawl, to walk, to talk, to use the bathroom, to feed themselves—but it was still believed that they would never be educable or employable. However, once those parents were encouraged to believe their children were capable of learning, it wasn’t long before there were programs in place to teach those children. Shortly thereafter, there were programs to place those children

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(now adults) into meaningful jobs. Not everyone learned, of course, but thousands did. Homes were developed for adults who still needed some supervision, but who could function with a lot of independence. Sheltered workshops employed many adults with Down’s Syndrome, while others found employment as grocery baggers, building maintenance workers, or other jobs suited for them that would give them the pride of earning a paycheck. Today we have a huge programmatic response for these children right up into and through adulthood. It’s a programmatic response that continues to pay rewards as we are now finding ways to mainstream those children with other children so they can find acceptance throughout society. When I worked with adults who had various handicaps, one of the women I spoke with was blind. As a child she was confined to her home, never taken to school, and told that school was beyond her abilities. She was not even allowed to socialize with others like herself which would have enabled her to see that she was not alone in the world as its sole blind person. She did not escape her home and its confining, overprotective atmosphere until she was in her seventies. She was angry about all those lost years, and thrilled to be attending school, learning to read and write using Braille, being able to explore a much bigger world than she’d ever known before. At that time she was a client at the Capital Area Center for Independent Living in Lansing, Michigan, part of a nationwide program to expand the horizons of independence and self-actualization for adults with many kinds of handicaps. I met these clients of CACIL when I went there to work with them on relearning writing, primarily after they had had strokes or accidents that had left their brains damaged, often with serious short-term memory losses. As they told their stories to one another and to me— once we realized that they’d need to talk their stories since some of them had problems with writing—their moods improved, their abilities to speak improved, and we all laughed a lot. A therapist who had been working with them told me that she didn’t know even half of what they were telling me about their brain injuries and the outcomes after their accidents or strokes. What was especially fascinating for me was learning through their storytelling that although short-term memory had been damaged, long-term memory was still intact and they were continuing to learn even during the immediate post-brain trauma period.

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The clients at CACIL could tell me about what had happened during and after the accident or the stroke if it were important enough to be placed immediately into long-term memory. Many of these memories were either visually vivid or emotionally charged—which may have helped them to gain recall. For example, virtually everyone who had been brain injured could talk about the terrible trauma that dealing with losing one’s former self entailed, the humiliation of needing to learn how to walk and talk and feed themselves and use the bathroom again, when they knew they were adults and supposed to know how to do those things. So they continued to gain long-term memories, even though their short term memories had been damaged. Maybe there is a brain mechanism that allows short-term memory to be bypassed and for information to be directly placed into long-term memory. This may be a key to teaching college students with autism, too. Several of my friends at CACIL were diagnosed as having a second grade learning capacity or less, and their families were told to put them in therapy briefly and then to put them in rest homes. There was no suggestion that they should be placed back into education and taught new skills. Interestingly, the ones who did best went home and worked to resume normal lives despite any problems they might have had. One of the clients, after being told she would never be able to walk, went home, got angry about being unable to get to the bathroom in her wheelchair because the hall wasn’t wide enough, threw the wheelchair out the front door, and crawled and gradually taught herself to walk again. Another went to live at her nephew’s home where she was encouraged to dress and feed herself despite being a quadriplegic, and to do everything she could to enjoy her life—to go out in public to restaurants, find places that have handicap access, etc. These were people with fairly old injuries. The prognosis for those with newer brain injuries is changing as doctors have begun to realize that brains not only can, but do heal themselves over time, or they find other paths for creating new information. Far fewer adults with brain injuries today are given such hopeless diagnoses as my friends at CACIL were. And today any doctor foolish enough to suggest placing a baby with Down’s Syndrome in a home for “disabled” children would be sued for malpractice. But we still have a lot of work to do to make colleges friendly places for young adults with autism as well as other physical and psychological problems.

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College programs for educating adults with autism are not in place yet, but on December 19, 2006, President Bush signed into law S-843, The Combating Autism Act providing $1 billion for autism research and education through 2011. It is hoped that this bill has provided some funding for doctors doing research on autism, for parents, and for K-12 and college faculty who teach students with autism as well as “a comprehensive services bill for individuals with autism, including reforming Medicaid-funding waivers, employment incentives, housing improvements, job training, and so much more” (Colston 2006). We now have an opportunity to apply for these funds to increase our knowledge of autism and autism spectrum disorders and to create programs that will provide these students with adequate support during their work in college. Students who have autism spectrum disorders may do quite well with some of their academic work, but may have real problems with other aspects of a college education. For example, these students may do well in the fields of accounting, computer programming, drafting, veterinary technicians, handicrafts, building trades, video game designing, engineering, statisticians, physicists, or mathematician careers, and many more (Grandin, Thinking in Pictures 2006). These are jobs that use visual processing of information and demand use of more long-term than short-term memory. People with autism often have serious problems with short-term memory, but are really good at working with long-term memory (Grandin, Thinking in Pictures 2006). Those with visual memory may also find that they are able to tolerate the isolation of being a creative writer, and they can use their large long-term memories for all the information about the world they have stored there. The problems with short-term memory have important implications for the teaching of writing where a great deal of the processing of information is done using short-term memory until that information has been stored in long-term memory. Students would be able to learn, though, by using scaffolding that allows them to gradually become familiar with the data set they are using, through repetition of writing tasks until they become automatic, and through lots of revising and editing practice. A timed writing sample would likely produce really negative results with papers that are very disorganized and that lack control of the major writing expectations, but this should not be a serious problem given that the “best practices” of the field of

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Composition demand that students be given sufficient time to revise and edit their work.

Some Common Signs of Autism in Students Grandin notes that she learns by visually processing information. She says that if she were a computer she would have many more brain areas devoted to creating visual memories and plans than other people have. She argues that people with autism (like herself ) or dyslexia often use this kind of visual information processing. She reminds us that visual thinkers are different from verbal thinkers. “Every thought I have is represented by a picture….I have no vague, abstract, language-based concepts in my head, only specific pictures” (“Genius” 2001). There are also music, math, and memory thinkers (Sowell in Grandin’s “Genius” 2001) who may have some degree of autism. According to Stephen Edelson (2007), in language, students with Asperger’s Syndrome have good grammar and vocabulary, but their speech can be repetitive, flat, and self-absorbed. In cognition, they are often obsessed with topics and may find it hard to write about what the teachers assign, if it’s not what they are interested in. They think concretely and may find it hard to perform an analysis on topics they are writing about. In behavior, they may be socially aware, but unable to use information to change their behaviors when they are inappropriate. They won’t notice if they are boring people by focusing on one topic and/or won’t recognize when their turn to talk should be yielded to another. In “Social Behavior in Autism,” Edelson (2009) notes that “a treatment strategy to improve social behavior is using ‘social stories,’ developed by Carol Gray.” These are short stories structured to help students learn what are and are not socially accepted behaviors. This could be done in First Year Experience type classes and might help not only students who have autism, but also other students who have other kinds of behavioral issues such as rowdy behavior in the classrooms and halls. Because learning and telling stories are some of our most basic human skills, they are often our most easily remembered (and rapidly stored in long-term memory data). My friends at CACIL, even those with the most severe language deficits, could remember and tell stories that had strong emotional and/or visual content.

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The Classroom Structure At University of Cincinnati’s Center for Access and Transition, where I taught until 2010, there were two tutors and one instructor in each Basic Writing classroom, and classes were capped at 15. Serving as primary faculty, I have a Ph.D. in Composition and Rhetoric with a specialization in Basic Writing. For my classes, one of my tutors had a Ph.D. in English and the other had an M.A. in English. Until recently, Basic Writing at UC was located solely in the Center for Access and Transition. In the Center for Access and Transition, we generally had approximately 800 first-year students each fall, most of whom completed their studies in the Center in a year or less and were then transitioned into other UC colleges. Our students took reading, writing, math, first year experience, and communication classes. We worked closely with students’ advisors, who were part of the learning teams that worked with our students on a broad spectrum of individual needs. Each student received placement in reading, writing, and/or math, depending on their needs. Some had fine scores on reading and writing placement tests, but needed work in basic math. Most, however, did find themselves in our 095, 097, and 101-Bridge writing courses. This may have been especially true for students with autism, because many of them may have strong math skills. Basic Writing classes in the Center for Access and Transition at University of Cincinnati were longer, more intensive, and allowed for more individual attention to each student’s unique needs. Each class met six hours a week, usually in a computer classroom. Each student also received several individual conferences with the instructor, in addition to long in-class discussions about the students’ essays. Having tutors in our classrooms made a huge difference in our ability to work with individual students who needed a lot of attention—students such as those with autism.

Working with Students with Autism Catherine Lord, Director of the Autism and Communication Disorders Program at University of Michigan and Chair of the National Academy of Sciences expert panel on Autism and Related Disorders, says that educating children and adults who have autism is a challenge, because “there is no one treatment that is going to work for all children or one treatment that is going to do everything for

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any given child over a long period of time” (Weaver 2005). This recognition that learning doesn’t necessarily result from using standard strategies, but may require using other strategies, sets us up with real challenges as educators. K-12 systems have long known that students can have one or more of a range of different learning styles, but the testing of those students rarely acknowledges individual differences; that perspective tends to be even more pervasive in college education. Just as teachers in the K-12 system who work with students with special needs must have training to work with those students, I believe the same situation exists when we work with special needs students in college. Currently, in many states, the only requirement to work with Basic Writing (or reading or math) students is a bachelors degree. Many of these teachers may have never encountered special needs students before. They may not have the required willingness or permission to abandon one teaching method and try another if the first doesn’t work. Unlike students with hearing impairments or blindness, whose needs can appear to be fairly obvious, autistic students may not present any kinds of obvious impairments, and may not have registered with the offices that work with special needs students. These students will have needs our other students don’t necessarily have, and their instructors may never be notified that those needs exist. One such autistic student I learned about when his sister called me, upset because he had lent his book to another student, and he was too shy to ask for the book back. She asked me to intervene for him and get his book back, which I did. And she explained why he was too shy to ask for the book himself. Until that point I could not begin to explain the peculiar constructions in his writing, so I was especially grateful to her for her help. At that point I went online to find information and the kind of information I found is in this chapter.

Using Universal Design to Work with our Students I assigned one of my in-class tutors to work almost exclusively with our autistic student. In our intensive classrooms we were able to work one-on-one with students and give them far more individual attention than would ever be possible in a regular composition classroom. The work done by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy has indicated that

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when working with students with disabilities, a pedagogy called Universal Design is exceptionally useful because it can work with each student as an individual, designing a learning plan specifically to meet the needs of that student. For the tutor and I the process meant working toward some kind of understanding about what might work to help our student acquire better writing skills.

Working with Our Student We would never have guessed at our autistic student’s status from his behaviors in class, because he was quiet, didn’t have emotional outbursts, and seemed willing to comply with our requests. To me, he seemed shy, but we’ve had many shy students, so that didn’t seem unusual. He did seem willing to talk in class, but he didn’t look at others, nor seem to notice their responses to his talking. He wasn’t picking up cues regarding what others felt was appropriate or inappropriate, so he might “hog the floor,” but again this is a fairly normal behavior for students in Basic Writing classes. It wasn’t until a few weeks into the term that I was told by his sister that he had autism, so prior to that I focused solely on his writing. What was unusual was how he constructed his writing. This student presented a fairly unique challenge to me as a teacher. His verbal comments in class were quite insightful, but while working on his papers he would lose control of his sentences which would begin to run off in tangents not particularly well reasoned, focused, or connected to his themes for the papers. The tutor and I could not simply apply our old, well-practiced teaching routines for a student who presented these problems. On occasion he would begin a seemingly sensible sentence and then suddenly take off in an unpredictable direction losing any connection between thoughts. Wading through the extraneous wordage to figure out what his meanings were took a great deal of time, but fortunately, although he made little eye contact, our student did work hard and was willing to revise his papers. Like many people with autism, this student seemed to have an extremely narrow range of interests. His particular topics of obsession were religion and sex, and when I would argue that these didn’t necessarily fit well with the overall theme of a particular paper he was working on, he would flatly state that I must be anti-sex and anti-religion. He did not behave obnoxiously in making his argument, but he was determined to prove that somehow there was a connection between

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religion and sex and the topic of his paper. He had trouble articulating the connection, and the tutor and I were unable to see it ourselves. What I have learned since then is that students with autism are often correct about connections they experience, but may be unable to explain these connections to others such as teachers who may have more verbal rather than visual processing capacities. This means that we have to work really hard with them, asking them to repeatedly explain the connections until we do understand, so we can help them to articulate their ideas so others reading their work can understand, too. In addition, Edelson says that giving some students instruction aurally may not work well, because some people with autism “have problems processing auditory information” (“Learning” 2007). Edelson explains that these students may benefit from visually rich environments they can learn from, while those who are more verbally acute and able to accurately hear and interpret auditory information may not benefit as much from having information presented visually. A lesson from K-12 education is that teachers need to learn to present information in ways that can be accessed by a range of learners with a range of different learning styles. Children and adults normally have different learning styles, but in individuals who have autism those differences seem to be magnified. When explaining how she is different from other people, Temple Grandin has said, “I have a 1000 gigabyte hard drive and a little 286 processor. Normal people may have only 10 gigabytes of disc space on their hard drive and a Pentium for a processor. I cannot do two or three things at once” (“Choosing” 1999). Those sentences do fit together, but only if one can lift an earlier part of the paragraph where she talks about her problems with short-term memory and understand that she is connecting the amount of short-term memory with the amount of processing—a little 286 with only a small amount of processing space, or a Pentium with a large amount of processing space. And the reader must then infer that her small amount of processing space is what creates the situation wherein she “cannot do two or three things at once,” while simultaneously understanding that this is OK because her longterm memory bank is very, very large compared with most people’s, and that allows Grandin to do what “normal” people cannot do. After working with our autistic student on the first paper, I assigned one of my tutors to work with him almost exclusively. I chose this particular tutor because he, too, was kind of shy in some circumstances.

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I felt that he would have a particularly gentle response to the student, that the student could feel comfortable with. This was indeed the case, as the student seemed to become comfortable with the tutor almost immediately. He began to seek the tutor out in class and in the Writing Center where the tutor was also working. He also worked directly with me during our one-on-one conferencing about his papers and at times when the tutor wasn’t available. Because our students were in class six hours a week instead of three, we had the time available to be able to work one-on-one with each student. I can’t imagine being able to work so closely with this student under the circumstances of a regular class of only three hours. As is often the case, our student’s social behaviors were not very functional, although I believe he tried hard to interact with other students. According to Stephen Edelson, there are three primary social orientations in autistic individuals. Socially avoidant individuals avoid human interactions and may actually find them painful. Socially indifferent individuals do not seem to have a need for social interactions and are often content to be by themselves (“Social” 2009). Jaak Panksepp at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University theorizes that these individuals have higher levels of beta-endorphins which often give people pleasure from social interaction with others, so they may not feel the need to seek those interactions. Socially awkward individuals want to form relationships with others, but find it very challenging to select appropriate behaviors. (“Social” 2009). Albert Bandura (1977) in his work on Social Learning suggests that most people learn a lot about how to be around other people by observing the interactions of others. But this is an avenue of learning that does not seem to be directly available to students who have autism. That doesn’t mean they can’t learn though, just that we need to use many avenues for teaching.

Conclusion I want to note in particular that by the end of the term, not only was our student’s writing improved greatly, but his classroom demeanor had also changed. He was now making more eye contact and was actually able to participate in conversations rather than simply rambling on about his own thoughts while ignoring the other people in the room. I believe a great deal more work needs to be done to inform classroom faculty in college about the needs of students with autism as well as

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effective pedagogical choices that may work well with these students, and with other students with disabilities of all kinds. At this point, though, we are still only beginning to analyze what kinds of help students with autism will need in order to be successful in college and later in their work careers. For us to learn more about how autism and autism spectrum disorders affect writing students, it is important for us to listen to people like Temple Grandin, an Assistant Professor at Colorado State University, and a person who has lived a highly successful adult life with autism. One of the points she makes is that for years we did not identify people who had higher functioning autism spectrum disorders as having problems. They were often just thought of as eccentric geniuses (“Genius” 2001). Albert Einstein comes to mind, although there may be no way to prove whether his eccentric behaviors would qualify him for that recently defined designation. Glen Elliott, of UC San Francisco, notes that there is no proof that Einstein had autism, and argues that geniuses can be both socially inept and not at all autistic. Nonetheless, Simon Baron-Cohen, of Cambridge University, tells us that it’s still an idea worth considering, because “there may be certain niches in society where people with AS can flourish for their strengths rather than their social skills” (Muir, BBC NEWS 2003). This could also begin to explain why the numbers of children with autism spectrum disorders are increasing now. As Julie Gerberding from the CDC argued above, it may be that our diagnoses have improved (CDC 2007). But it may also be that in times past, many children who might now be labeled as autistic or with one of the other autism spectrum disorders, had found ways to manage despite their disabilities, just as Temple Grandin did. How many other geniuses like Temple Grandin are out there today who have diagnosed their own needs as learners, who have created their own paths to success, who have found ways to function socially, or otherwise adapted to the expectations of a non-autistic world that didn’t understand them? If the CDC now estimates that 1 out of every 150 of people in the United States has some autistic characteristics, replacing the old estimates of 1 in 10,000—that may imply that many autistic people have been able to overcome their challenges to become adequately or even well-educated, reasonably functional adults. If this is so, what would that teach us about the ability to learn despite challenges to our learning? I raise these questions to sound a hopeful,

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perhaps even joyous, note to what might otherwise be a resounding sorrow among parents whose children receive that diagnosis. If I am right, few adults with autism have been unable to overcome it sufficiently to function in the adult world, while the others—the majority of those adults with autism—are out among us, working, loving, raising families, holding down jobs, and probably writing books and teaching our students in colleges across the United States.

Note I was frankly astonished to discover a huge body of work that has already been done on working with students with disabilities, because that body of work is almost completely invisible to faculty teaching these students. Only if we really search for answers does the information become noticeable, and many faculty are busy enough that they don’t make that search. Or they simply fail students like mine without ever finding why their writing is so strange from a writing teacher’s perspective. Few college teachers who have majors other than education have ever taken a course on working with students with special needs. The Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy (CRDEUL) at the University of Minnesota has developed one of the finest resources for working with students with disabilities. The extensive annotated bibliographies created by the CRDEUL are extremely useful for those of us with limited time to pursue this knowledge. I’ve also included several of the books they have written to give writing faculty additional resources.

References Adams, James B., Stephen Edelson, Temple Grandin, and Bernard Rimland. 2004. Advice for Parents of Young Autistic Children. http://www.autism. org. Autism Series. NBC Today Show. February 2005. Bandura, Albert. 1977. Social Learning Theory. New York: General Learning Press. BBC News. 30 April 2003. Einstein and Newton had Autism. http:// newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/health/298647.stm, http://news.bbc.co.uk.go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/ health/2988647.stm.

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Center for Disease Control and Prevention. 8 February 2007. CDC Releases New Data on Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) from Multiple Communities in the United States. http://www.cdc.gov/print.do. Center for the Study of Autism. January 2003. http://www.autism.org/califepidemic.html. Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy (CRDEUL). 22 March 2004. Annotated Bibliography: Disability Information, Teaching Practices, and Accommodation Issues. General College, University of Minnesota. http://www.gen.umn.edu/research/ CTAD/bibliography/bibliography_abstracts_DTA.html. ———. 22 March 2004. Annotated Bibliography: Student Support Services/ Counseling. General College: University of Minnesota. http://www.gen. umn.edu/CTAD/bibliography_bibliography_abstracts_SS.html. ———. 22 March 2004. Annotated Bibliography: Miscellaneous Topics [on Disability]. General College: University of Minnesota. http://www. gen.umn.edu/CTAD/ bibliography_bibliography_abstracts_SS.html. Colston, Marguerite Kirst. 19 December 2006. ASA Applauds President Bush’s Signing of Combating Autism Act. http://www.autismsociety.org/ site/News2?JServSessionIdr012=3quenyIt3ul.app26a&page. Duranczyk, Irene, Jeanne Higbee, and Dana Britt Lundell, eds. 2004. Best practices for access and retention in higher education. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy. Edelson, Stephen. 1995. Asperger’s Syndrome. http://www.autism.org/asperger.html. ———. 2007. Learning styles and autism. http://www.autism.org/styles. html. ———. 2009. Social behavior in autism spectrum disorders. Developmental delay resources. http: //www.devdelay.org/. Grandin, Temple. December 2001. Genius May Be an Abnormality: Educating Students with Asperger’s Syndrome, or High Functioning Autism. http://www.autism.org/temple/genius.html. ———. November 1999. Choosing the Right Job for People with Autism or Asperger’s Syndrome. http://www.autism.org/temple/jobs.html. ———. 1986. Emergence: Labeled autistic. Arlington, TX: Future Horizons. ———. 2004. Developing talents. Arlington, TX: Future Horizons. ———. 2006. Thinking in Pictures. Arlington, TX: Future Horizons.

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Haswell, Richard, ed. 2001. Beyond Outcomes: Assessment and Interaction within a University Writing Program. Westport, CT: Ablex. ———. 1991. Gaining ground in college writing: Tales of development and interpretation. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press. Higbee, Jeanne, ed. 2003. Curriculum transformation and disability: Implementing universal design in higher education. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy. Lundell, Dana Britt, and Jeanne Higbee, eds. 2001 Theoretical perspectives for developmental education. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy. Muir, Hazel. 30 April 2003. Einstein and Newton showed signs of autism. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3676&print=true. National Institute of Mental Health. 2004. Autism Spectrum Disorders (Pervasive Developmental Disorders). http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/autism.cfm?Output=Print. Nature Genetics. 24 February 2007. Autism Gene Identified by Yale and Global Consortium. Doi:10.1038/ng1985. Published online 18 February 2007 and 24 February 2007. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/printerfriendlynews. php?newsid=62743. Ohanian, Susan. 1999. One size fits few: The folly of educational standards. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Russell, Ann. 2003. Literacy development for students with no voice: Scheme and schema.” Reading Improvement 40 (Fall 2003):104-110. Shaughnessy, Mina. 1977. Errors and expectations. New York: Oxford University Press. Weaver, Jane. 23 February 2005. “Inside the Autism Treatment Maze: No Single Approach Is Best for Every Child.” http://www.msnbc.com/ id/6948119/. White, Linda Feldmeier. 2002. “Learning Disability, Pedagogies, and Public Discourse.” College Composition and Communication 53.4 ( June 2002): 705-738. Yale University Press Release. February 2007. Yale child study center receives over $3.5 Million NIH grant for autism research. http:// www.yale.edu/Opa/newsr/07-01-25-02.all.html. Yale University Press Release. February 2007. Autism gene identified by Yale and Global consortium. http://www.yale.edu/opa/newsr/07-02-22-02.

2 “I just felt kinda invisible” Accommodations for Learning Disabled Students in the Composition Classroom

Katherine V. Wills

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Introduction

he number of learning disabilities such as Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorders (OCD), and Non-verbal Learning Disorders (NVLD) continues to grow as medical and psychological research provides new insights into learning processes. Manifestations of these learning disabilities are increasingly evident in first-year composition classrooms, thus requiring ethical and legal accommodations by administrators and teachers. The future will likely present teachers with even more students with learning disabilities. How might teachers and administrators who are concerned with learning outcomes and legal ramifications design classroom pedagogies that meet the needs of students with disabilities seeking writing assistance? Teachers accustomed to teaching non-disabled learners may need to rethink their pedagogies. By having a better understanding of disabilities and their effect on learning, teachers can produce more satisfying student accommodations that result in better instructional and personal outcomes. This interview of one ASD student aims to begin to fill a gap in the scholarship on classroom pedagogy for students with ASD/OCD/ NVLD by (1) sharing case study data from a student with a ASD, (2) conducting a discourse analysis of the case study in order to elicit ways to improve teaching writing to students with disabilities, and (3) offering possibilities for enhancing writing pedagogy for disabled students.

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In order to gain knowledge about how to teach more effectively to students with ASD/OCD/NVLD, I investigated the experiences of a former student with ASD from my W131 Elementary Composition class: Jimmy Johnson (pseudonym). I asked Jimmy to generalize about what hindered or helped his learning experience in W131 Introductory Composition, our institution’s first year writing course, and what pedagogical strategies might facilitate the pedagogy of disabled students. The resulting article is grounded in current writing pedagogy theory and disability studies while emphasizing the student’s narrative voice. I’m including detailed description and discourse analysis regarding what accommodations can be made in the writing classroom according to the interviewee. The purpose of my inquiry is to determine through qualitative research how to teach composition and introductory writing courses better to students with disabilities. The dissemination of Jimmy Johnson’s voice and people like him can be beneficial to college writing instructors and researchers in the field of composition pedagogy and Disability Studies. The importance of first-year writing courses on the future success of learning disabled students’ academic success and retention should not be underestimated. Because of my inveterate belief in the teaching of writing and the importance of writing to academic success, this project stirs my passion and stimulates my growth as a teacher-researcher. My objectives for my interview and dissemination of results were primarily: • Providing a forum for a learning disabled student’s perceptions about his experiences in his composition classroom, • Extrapolating from the student’s experience how composition teachers can more effectively meet pedagogical objectives when instructing learning disabled students, • Questioning instantiated views of social and intellectual subjectivity that reinforce ineffective pedagogy, • Suggesting strategies for more effective teaching of students with disabilities.

Disability studies and composition Not all disabled students desire accommodations preferring privacy. Some students willingly out their disabilities and seek accommodations. Brenda Jo Brueggemann has found sub-categories within categories that distinguish the disabled from each other. She coined the neologism

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“crip-casting” to describe the many distinctions among physical disabilities (Snyder et al. 2002). For example, origins of disabilities may be accidental (such as injuries from motorcycles or bicycles or injuries resulting from service to one’s country) or congenital. Being disabled is less of a monolithic and permanent impaired state than it is a mutable, socially constructed condition. Cognitive injuries resulting from service to one’s country may be valorized, whereas, cognitive disabilities from accidents may be stigmatized. In “Disability Studies, Cultural Analysis, and the Critical Practice of Technical Communication Pedagogy,” Jason Palmeri (2006, 49-65) cautions readers that disability narratives are often created by normalizing discourses. He offers critical insights on how disability studies can be used to correct marginalizing technical communication pedagogy. The awareness Palmeri brings to technical communication pedagogy can be applied to composition pedagogy: As Mitchell (2000) demonstrated, some disability autobiographies workagainst a social/political understanding of disability, at times reinforcing the problematic tropes of disability experience as an individual problem to be overcome (self-reliance) or an individual tragedy to be pitied (sentimentality). In other words, although autobiographical narratives of disability can offer important insights, they too must be critically interrogated for the material implications of how they construct disability identities. (Palmeri 2006, 62)

There is no one universal desire by disabled people to be recognized or unrecognized. James C. Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson (2002) note that some of the accommodations that students seek might be at odds with academic conventions about individual work. From another perspective, what if accommodations, such as extra time for disabled students, or use of instructional aides (human and/or digital), seem unfair to non-disabled students? The disabled student might not want to be noticed as an exception to others, especially peers. Wilson and Lewiecki-Wilson recognize few options: Silence, however tactful it might at first seem, is not helpful either. It furthers the invisibility of disabled students and reproduced fairly widespread assumptions about the norm. One assumption we frequently encounter is the claim often made by non-disabled students, but sometimes by the disabled as well, that disabled persons just want to be treated like everyone else, therefore one should overlook and not mention their disability. (Snyder et al. 2002, 299)

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Nonetheless, teachers of writing are ethically and legally bound by the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act that requires “reasonable accommodations” referring to the modifications made to learning environments that eliminate, as best as possible, any physical or instructional impediments to learning for students with disabilities (Henderson 2000). The law does not require that “special” privileges be given to students with disabilities, nor does it require “non-essential” accommodations that would place an excessive financial burden on an institution of higher learning. Ignoring or avoiding pedagogical issues related to disabled students is not an option of ethical practitioners.

Jimmy speaks about what helps him be a better writer I conducted a series of interviews with Jimmy Johnson, a high functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders student who enrolled in my W131 Introductory Composition I class during the spring 2004 semester. I selected Jimmy as a case study because his learning was complicated by extant privacy laws regarding protected subjects; all instructors were left uninformed at the beginning of the semester about Jimmy’s special needs. I taped and transcribed the interviews. Then I analyzed his text using qualitative thick description techniques based on Geertz and Denzin (Patton 1990, 375). Internal Review Board status has been granted (Case #EX0601-28B). Jimmy is a white male, twenty-something who was adopted at birth. He is tall, about six feet two inches, and weighs about 190 pounds. His hair is neck-length ashy blond and he has light blue eyes that sometimes turn gray or even green. He does not smile and presents flat facial affect. His flat affect combined with his large stature and modulating voice that ranges from booming in one sentence to mumbling in the next sentence has intimidated several instructors—men and women—who expressed fear for their physical safety and the safety of their students, even though Jimmy had made no physical or verbal threats. In the semester that I interviewed him, Jimmy was taking three courses: History, Freshman Elementary Composition W131, and Spanish I. Our Adaptive Services representatives did not—indeed could not legally—notify faculty of the fact that Jimmy had a learning disability. His circumstances came to light mid-semester after two

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professors commiserated in the hallway about a “problem” student. One instructor who was familiar with cognitive disabilities suspected that Jimmy might have ASD. Only then did all three faculty members understand Jimmy and the reasons underlying his behavior. Even though his three instructors understood his needs, Jimmy did not pass History or Spanish I. The History instructor, who primarily lectured, had difficulty dealing with Jimmy’s continual questions, occasional outbursts, and persistent fidgeting in class. Jimmy’s test scores may have earned him a passing grade in History, but he decided to withdraw on his own. Jimmy dropped his Introductory Spanish class late in the semester; he did not explain his reasons to me. Jimmy passed Introductory English primarily because of two writing strategies and Jimmy’s singular predisposition to English teachers from his positive high school experience. The first writing practice of using the portfolio method gave Jimmy repeated feedback on his assignments. The second classroom practice of using collaborative groups linked Jimmy with three supportive non-traditional peers who gladly assisted his writing process. Jimmy attributed his success in passing both remedial College English W130 and W131 to his previous positive experiences with high school teachers. His most memorable high school experience was of a sympathetic English teacher who “made a lot of jokes” about him in a respectful way. To Jimmy, this was preferable to his usual sense of being ignored or invisible. “It was just that I just felt kinda invisible.” Jimmy’s comment is ironic because Jimmy was anything but invisible to his instructors, classmates, and the administration. As is typical of Autism Spectrum Disorder, Jimmy had difficulty reading affective cues. I am good with English for some reason. I had in high school some of the best known, best loved teachers, including John Zeigler (pseudonym). The best English teacher, he made a lot of jokes about me. When it comes to that guy, I don’t care. He was funny. ( Johnson 2006)

Jimmy’s comments accentuate the cumulative nature of writing instruction along with other content areas. College writing teachers must cope with students’ overt and covert baggage about writing from previous classes. In the case of learning disabled students, the baggage tends to be more significant. Jimmy’s encouraging experiences in high

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school predisposed him to see himself as a writer. When immersed in a supportive learning environment, Jimmy tapped into his memory of good experiences. Jimmy specifically mentioned two other concerns related to assignments that he felt helped him master writing and content. He benefitted by instructors “asking if there is anyone who has a hard time doing multi-step projects first thing during class.” If a student needs assistance, the instructor can provide written directions or repeat oral instructions. Jimmy was also aware that he had a better chance at succeeding when assignments were collaborative or interactive—“when everybody has to work together.” When asked what he could have done to be a better learner, Jimmy labeled himself: “From my side, I was arrogant. Troublemaking.” When I probed for clarification, Jimmy mentioned his parents and his grades in History and Spanish. “Not just from me, but from mother and father [said I am arrogant]. That’s the truth. I’ve already failed two classes.” Jimmy seemed to accept responsibility for his learning disappointments, while at the same time paying attention his emotions: My arrogance is not controlled by the things I do, but the arrogance that comes with it. I can learn to change that attitude. It is almost like going through Buddhist meditation, pardon the analogy. Learning how to control my anger. Learning how to focus my control on other things. I have actually achieved a state of happiness, well maybe not happiness, until of course I come from work and I am knocked out. ( Johnson 2006)

Jimmy provided several pedagogical practices that he felt would aid him in writing (and other) classes. His views, though not necessarily universal, could be generalizable to other students and teaching practices: There is one thing you could do. Continue what you are doing. Just try to help out with anyone who can’t do projects. Ask if there is anyone who has a hard time doing multi-step projects first thing during class. That goes for history, English. More than one step. That goes for History, English, science, math. Am I forgetting anything? Languages. All the sciences, history, Anthropology, math. Everything. ( Johnson 2006)

Jimmy expressed particular difficulty with lecture classes, which he attributed to his sleeping problems. He felt that his classroom behavior

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would be more productive if classes were more interactive: “Everybody has to work together.” I am not trying to be mean. Or anything, but lectures are kinda a little dull unless you have people interacting. Except for during math class, for some odd reason I can’t sleep. I can I stay awake during math class. And I also write down all the notes I can. ( Johnson 2006)

The classroom is not designed for psychological analyses as teachers are not educated to discern subtle neurological processes. Clinical diagnosis has not been the job of the teacher who is educated to teach composition. Providing writing instruction accommodations assumes a degree of recognition and preparation of teachers. By listening to the writing concerns of even one disabled student, Jimmy, we might gain insight as to how classroom context contributes to shaping the learning process. Process, too, should be imagined as a mutable—possibly evolving—path.

Strategies for teaching writing to learning disabled students The following lists build on Jimmy’s observations about how to design classes and shape pedagogy for learning disabled students such as him. These practices may benefit all students.

Pedagogy of the Body •• Offer both written and oral instructions •• Repeat comments or questions, and question accuracy of students’ understanding •• Ask students how they wish to be called on and responded to •• Be multi-sensory: use hands and gesture to enforce meaning; use facial expressions without being cartoonish; say it, write it, read it, discuss it •• Use computers as communicative tools for students •• Both discuss and post notices that ask students about their special needs •• Be a reflective practitioner regarding your sensitivity regarding disability issues •• Be alert to hidden disabilities

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Institutional •• Create a campus culture that presents narrative voices from disabled cultures •• Inform faculty, staff, students, and tutors about disability compliance laws •• Provide access to writing tutors and campus Writing Centers

Ergonomic •• Ensure accessible physical accommodations •• Make desks, tables, computer tables, and furniture appropriate for disabled learners

Feedback •• Provide concrete and focused feedback in multiple communication forms

•• Have open dialogue about disability and its diction •• Teach students time management and organizational skills •• Teach students reading skills, mastery of phonics, and speech skills

•• Offer peer mentors •• Be positive

Tools and Technology •• Allow recording devices or provide video and audio recording of tutoring sessions

•• Use large print screens and hearing adapted technology •• Teach mnemonics skills •• Apply multimodal media •• Utilize Phone TTY

Accommodations for disabled learners in writing and literacy environments will develop as a consequence of a multitude of interactions with others, especially learners and teachers. These human interactions, or accommodations, can satisfy material and institutional outcomes expected by law and accrediting bodies. These accommodations, which can serve all students, include asking students early in the semester what strategies help them learn best, assigning collaborative study groups (even in lecture courses), providing multiple methods of assignment and feedback transmission (such as written, oral, online,

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peer), designing pedagogy to engage all students regardless of their physical or intellectual status, and admitting that rethinking pedagogy might involve some development time and effort. As disabled students like Jimmy Johnson enter higher education and college composition classrooms in greater numbers, teachers can bring not just material accommodations and unexamined extant institutional relations, but they can re-imagine intellectual, physical, social, and affective landscapes. As teachers of writing encounter learning diversity predicated on disability, we can rethink pedagogy as a commitment to engage disability itself and remake its social construction one student and one class at a time, minimizing the material consequences of the social construction of disability, illuminating expectations, and questioning normative subjectivity towards full educational access.

References Brizee, H. Allen. 1998. Handbook for tutoring students with LDs. Virginia Tech Writing Center. No longer available. Henderson, Kelly. 2000. Overview of ADA, IDEA, and Section 504. American Disabilities Act. Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis. Human Subjects Informed Consent. Case number E0601-28B. Johnson, Jimmy (Pseudonym). 2006. Personal Interview, Columbus, IN. Mitchell, David T., and Sharon L. Snyder, eds. 1997. The body and physical differences: discourses of disability. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ———. 2000. Narrative prosthesis: disability and the dependence of discourse. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Mullin, Joan A., and Ray Wallace, eds. 1994. Intersections: theory-practice in the writing center. Urbana, IL: NCTE. Murphy, Christina, and Joe Law, eds. 1995. Landmark essays on writing centers. Davis, CA: Hermagoras. Palmeri, Jason. 2006. Disability studies, cultural analysis, and the critical practice of technical communication pedagogy. Technical Communication Quarterly 15(1), 49-65. Patton, Michael Quinn. 1990. Qualitative evaluation and research methods. London: SAGE. Sayers, Bonnie. 2006. Autism Spectrum Disorder site. Recommendations for students with autism. http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art35123.asp.

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Snyder, Sharon L., Brenda Jo Brueggemann, and Rosemarie GarlandThomson, eds. 2002. Disability studies: enabling the humanities. New York: MLA. Tomey, Harley III. 1996-2006. “What is an IEP?” L.D. Online. Virginia Dept. of Education. http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/iep/iep_process.html#anchor903199. Wilson. James C., and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson. 2002. Reprinted 2004. Constructing a third space: disability studies in the teaching of English, and institutional transformation. In Disability studies: enabling the humanities, edited by Sharon L. Snyder, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, and Rosemarie Garland-Thompson, 296-307. NY: MLA.

3 Structure & Accommodation Autism & the Writing Center

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April Mann

n “Neurodiversity,” a recent College English article about teaching college students with autism, Ann Jurecic issues what might be taken as either a warning or a challenge: “[W]e are about to see a change in our student population. Increasing numbers of students with Asperger’s Syndrome, autism, and other disorders from the spectrum will soon arrive in our college classrooms—if they are not there already” (2007, 422). Jurecic observes the rapid increase of Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) diagnoses and notes that students with AS are being given an unprecedented level of academic and social support in the primary grades. Because of this improved academic and social support, colleges and universities can expect to enroll increasing numbers of students who have been diagnosed somewhere on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum. Lawrence Welkowitz and Linda Baker, in “Supporting College Students with Asperger’s Syndrome,” are equally blunt: “Whether colleges are ready or not, students [with autism or Asperger’s Syndrome] who have become accustomed to receiving ‘social’ or other supportive services, are beginning to pursue higher education, and their success or failure could be dependent on the degree to which they can be identified and helped by college communities” (2005, 175). Jurecic concludes her piece by arguing that “[w]e must expand our sense of the depth and reach of difference—not so that we can exclude but so that we can teach” (2007, 439). This echoes an assertion that Jurecic makes in an earlier piece, “Mindblindness: Autism, Writing, and the Problem of Empathy,” that “we can begin to understand one another across divides of difference” (2006, 18). While I agree with Jurecic about the prudence of trying

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to understand the special considerations of this population and the implications for teaching and tutoring writing, I disagree with the fundamental premise of her conclusion; it is not in understanding differences that we will make our greatest strides. Perhaps, following Jean Kiedaisch and Sue Dinitz’ suggestions regarding the implementation of Universal Design, we at writing centers can see the differences of those with students on the autism spectrum as similar to the spectrum of human differences, wherein the “broad range of human ability is ordinary, not special” (2007, 50). For writing centers, their colleges and universities, and for students and teachers, I believe progress will come through learning to understand commonalities and through developing and promulgating strategies which acknowledge and encourage the abilities of the students in the AS population, without positing them as somehow irrevocably, neurologically other. Those of us who tutor in writing centers will be working with students who live with a condition not generally well-understood. One of the difficulties for writing center tutors in this situation is the confusing nature of the Autism/Asperger’s Syndrome diagnosis. For many, the term “autism” still evokes images of Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, an institutionalized savant for whom basic social functioning is an unachievable goal. Today, the term “autism” is being used much more broadly to include a whole spectrum of symptoms and levels of functionality which includes people who would not have been considered autistic in the past. Diagnoses such as high-functioning autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS), among others, are being applied to people who meet certain diagnostic criteria but who are able to function in society, often quite well. Well known figures such as Dan Akroyd and Darryl Hannah have claimed to be on the autism spectrum, and others, like Bill Gates, are often spoken of as if it had been proven that they have an autism spectrum disorder. Others have become well-known primarily for being high-functioning people with autism; Temple Grandin, Daniel Tammet, and others are writing autobiographies, appearing on talk shows, serving as subjects for HBO biographies, and generally working to change the public perception of autism. Jurecic structures her essay around her interactions with “Gregory,” one of her students whom she strongly suspects is diagnosable as being on the autism spectrum. Although I too have taught students I “suspected,” my primary knowledge of the symptoms and

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presentations of AS comes from my oldest son, Jacob (now twelve, who was diagnosed with AS when he was three years old) and the research and conference presentations I have done since his diagnosis. For obvious reasons, it seems to me, it is primarily people who would be considered to have high-functioning autism or Asperger’s Syndrome who we will be seeing in our writing centers for the foreseeable future. The distinctions between high- and low-functioning autism are not without controversy, with many people with autism eschewing the distinction altogether. On the blog “Astrid’s Journal,” for example, the distinction is described as “really arbitrary.” Astrid asserts that “people are autistic and have fewer or more symptoms to a greater or lesser extent, and some of these people have an intellectual disability in addition to being autistic” (High-Functioning vs. Low-Functioning Autism 2010). She further argues that the complications of autism make testing so difficult that these distinctions are meaningless. Even for experts in this field (judging by the AS literature), the slippery nature of this diagnosis is off-putting. The set of symptoms that leads to an Asperger’s Syndrome diagnosis sounds much like the presentations of several other diagnoses (sometimes viewed as interchangeable), including Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities, SemanticPragmatic Disorder, High-Functioning Autism, and PDD-NOS. At the time this manuscript is being revised, the American Psychological Association is considering collapsing all of the Spectrum Disorders into a single diagnosis of autism, eliminating AS completely as a separate diagnosis (Wallis 2010). All of these disorders present with social impairment, quirky or repetitive behavior, and average or above intelligence.1 This essay will discuss, primarily, Asperger’s Syndrome, or AS, but for the purposes of this discussion, and in our role as writing center tutors and coordinators, a general understanding of this type of disorder is more important than a clinical ability to distinguish between various related diagnoses. The American Psychological Association’s 1  See Frankenburger (2007) for more details about specific diagnoses. Some of these authors use AS and High-functioning Autism interchangeably. For a discussion that treats the two terms as distinct diagnoses, see Welkowitz and Baker (2005). See Howlin (2004) for an explanation that “there is no empirical basis for classifying Asperger Syndrome as a condition distinct from High-Functioning Autism” (15).

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Diagnostic Manual (the DSM-IV) officially recognized Asperger’s Syndrome as “Asperger’s Disorder” in 1994 and noted three main functional issues: “Difficulty in social interaction”; “Restricted, repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests, and activities”; and “Clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning” (American Psychological Association 1994). This “triad of impairments” connected with Asperger’s and Autism are primarily social in manifestation (Happé 2008). Thus students with autism may be functional in an academic setting, as they must have been to reach college level, but they may be less socially adept than typical (or neurotypical) students and more rigid in their areas of interests or expertise. I have struggled with my phrasing in this chapter. Although I have been told by an autistic colleague that she prefers “autistic person” to “person with autism,” I have decided to follow the guidelines I’ve seen more often in publications written by people with autism which suggest that “if we refer to a person on the autism spectrum as a person with autism, not an autistic person, we better allow that person their dignity as an equal member of society.” These publications assert that no one likes to be labeled, but “person with autism” allows the person to come first, rather than the label (“Living with Autism” 2010). Students with AS seeking help at writing centers will, most likely, decline to disclose their condition to their tutors. This is a significant barrier to developing a standard protocol for working with students with all kinds of disabilities. However, how we respond to our inability to diagnose AS will probably parallel the way we respond to our inability to diagnose the other conditions we are already familiar with. As teachers and tutors, we are already alert for signs of disability, not for purposes of diagnosis, but in order to suggest useful strategies to the student writers. The graphic displacements often seen in the writings of students with dyslexia, for example, or the organizational leaps that often appear in the writings of students with ADD allow us to consider strategies in approaching a student’s writing without needing an official confirmation from a Disabilities Services Memo. In “Changing Notions of Difference in the Writing Center: The Possibilities of Universal Design,” Kiedaisch and Dinitz talk about the way some disabilities seem fairly obvious to experienced tutors, although not necessarily to inexperienced and/or peer tutors (2007). They write about being shocked that a peer tutor was unable to

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recognize a student as having some sort of a learning disability, based on a writing sample which showed cognitive depth juxtaposed with simplistic, and rampant, spelling and capitalization errors. These errors seemed like clear markers of disability to the writing center coordinator, although peer tutors were not as attuned to the markers. Like many other conditions, psychological or physical, autism does manifest itself through certain characteristic signs, or markers, and knowing those signs would be useful to tutors whether or not their clients disclose, or have been given, official diagnoses. Of course, a student who avoids eye contact, for example, or talks at unexpected length about a specific academic topic may have other reasons for this behavior, but it would still be useful for a writing center tutor, in approaching the tutorial, to know that these are typical manifestations of AS and that these manifestations are primarily social, thus not necessarily visible on the page. The Kiedaisch and Dinitz essay goes on to repudiate the very idea of classifying some students as different, based on disability, especially as different from the tutors, who are, in most discussions of writing center work, presupposed to be cognitively and physically “normal.” I will return to Kiedaisch and Dinitz’s repudiation later in the chapter. At writing centers, we often work with students with better-understood learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, which tend to impact a student’s reading and writing abilities. We work with students who, as Patricia Dunn explains in Learning Re-Abled, present with “language processing problems … the inexplicable difficulties some people have in learning to read and write” (1995, 20). Students with Asperger’s Syndrome, in contrast, may have few difficulties learning to read and write (unless they also have learning disabilities). In fact, people with Asperger’s Syndrome often have hyperlexia, which means that they excel at reading and writing, usually at a very early age. Tutors will need to understand how to avoid a deficit-oriented mentality when working with students who might have AS, or, perhaps, the type of deficit mentality which looks for deficient writing or reading skills as the visible signal of impairment. On the sentence level, where writing center readers often notice signs of learning disabilities, students with AS are likely to demonstrate at least as much proficiency as any of the students in the center or studio. The communication issues for people on the autism spectrum are related more to the nature of

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communication, the contact between minds that allows one person to share information, emotions, and so much more, with another. Communication difficulties sometimes appear for students with AS in what psychologists call “theory of mind.” Jurecic explains that “even for those [people with autism] whose vocabulary and syntax appear to be comparable to those of neurotypical adults, communication and comprehension remain impaired when they must take into account a listener’s thoughts and feelings … or when the writer must understand terms for emotions and mental states” (2007, 425). If written ability requires an imagination of audience, as current composition pedagogy holds, then those who have difficulty imagining the mental states of someone other than themselves face a communicative disadvantage. The understanding of this disorder is at such an early stage, however, that it would be premature to apply this caution too broadly, as Jurecic acknowledges. Theory of mind seems closely related to the ideas of audience that many writers struggle with. In fact, Darius, one of the contributors to Aquamarine Blue 5: Personal Stories of College Students with Autism, proposes a contrary proposition—that for writers, AS confers some benefits in understanding audience: When I am writing papers for my courses, I have to take into account that other people do not think in the same way that I do. It takes a bit of extra work, as I cannot simply assume, the way most people do, that the other person is like myself in most respects and will have the same type of emotional and cognitive responses to a certain event or piece of information I’d have. Having had to acquire this skill instead of being able to simply assume that I can use my own thoughts and thought processes as a model for those of other people is a huge advantage. It means that you are less likely to fall into the trap of believing that you know what other people are experiencing, simply because you (think you) know what your own experiences are. (2002, 39)

While our collective knowledge about this syndrome is still in its infancy, we may come to find that, in writing at least, AS confers both weaknesses and rewards. At this stage it seems best to determine how the best practices in the composition and writing center communities can coexist with the best practices of the autism support community. I hope that this discussion will read more like an exercise in Universal Design than a sample of special needs remediation. Universal Design, in this context, means that tutors approach their work with an

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understanding that, both for tutors and their clients, “the broad range of human ability is ordinary, not special” (qtd. in Kiedaisch and Dinitz 2008, 50). This position also aligns with movements within the AS community to reconceptualize AS as another version of normality, rather than a disability. Thus, groups such as “Aspies for Freedom” assert that “Asperger’s and autism are not negative, and are not always a disability” (Aspies 2010). Although it’s useful for tutors to understand what AS is and what it might mean in terms of helping students, this understanding has to be nuanced. We have to understand, not only that students with learning differences are not, as Julie Neff, asserts in the seminal essay “Learning Disabilities and the Writing Center,” “lazy or dumb” (1994, 92), but also that discussions of autism and autism spectrum disorders often read more like discussions about diversity than discussions of disability.

Advice for and from Professionals When writing center tutors work with students, we usually follow a pedagogy which suggests we try to help students become better writers rather than “simply” improve their papers. Steven North’s seminal “The Idea of a Writing Center” explains, and many Writing Centers repeat, that “our job is to produce better writers, not better texts” (1995, 80). Most writing centers pride themselves on helping writers better express themselves, organize their materials, and interpret their assignments; also, most writing centers emphasize a tutor’s role as working with a writer, rather than imposing an organizational scheme or telling a writer what to do. This pedagogy fits in well with the current approaches favored by many composition programs, which encourage students to, independently, find topics that interest them and then figure out appropriate organizational schemes for those papers, choosing from among many possibilities based on what information they hope to convey to their readers. Many composition programs and writing centers follow a pedagogy which depicts writing as a series of choices; as tutors, we work to help writers negotiate this series of choices, thus helping writers become more metacognitive and learn to understand how and why one choice might work better than another. At a college writing center, tutors often help students try out various choices, letting students decide which version of a paper or paragraph they think works best. We often help writers who have been provided some elements of structure or content from their teachers, but who are

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expected to choose from among numerous possibilities to effectively respond to an assignment. However, not everyone reacts well to a series of choices. What seems like a generous range of possibilities to some people might, to others, and especially to someone on the autism spectrum, feel like a barrage. In 2006, at the XIII Annual Florida Conference of the Center for Autism and Related Disabilities (CARD), Gary Mesibov delivered a keynote speech entitled “Learning Styles of Students with Autism: Developing Educational Programs to Match Learning Needs.” Mesibov, an autism researcher who helped develop a specific method of working with children who have Asperger’s Syndrome and other Autism Spectrum Disorders (TEACCH), related an example of two versions of a high school history assignment. In the first, the teacher tells students to go online and research everything they can about the Battle of Gettysburg and write up a report. For this assignment, the student with Asperger’s Syndrome would most likely feel comfortable—easily able to understand and complete the task. In the second version of the assignment, Mesibov’s teacher suggested students go online, or go to the library, or look for some old maps or costumes that might provide some understanding of the battle, or research the types of medicine that would have been used to treat soldiers at the time. Mesibov concluded that the same AS student who felt comfortable and confident with the first assignment would most likely feel frustrated, overwhelmed, and confused by the second (2006). Instead of feeling excited by the open-ended possibilities, the student might, according to Mesibov, become paralyzed at this first step, by the series of choices and the decision-making process it demanded. Mesibov’s second assignment resonates with current trends in composition classes; increasingly, students will bring these kinds of papers (or their college-level versions) to the writing center. The non-directive, inquiry-based trends in composition reflected in the paper assignments, which composition teachers often view as freeing for students, may have a paralyzing effect on students with AS. When composition and writing center professionals talk about our theoretical frameworks using phrases such as the “liberating pedagogy of empowerment” and the “social context of writing,” we might have to pause and consider how our philosophies can better reflect the reality that some people find a directive to make choices oppressive, not liberating, and are

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additionally threatened, not relieved, by the idea of understanding and employing writing’s social context (Murphy and Law 1995, xii-xiii). For writing centers, this variance may seem to challenge our philosophy of being non-directive with writers who come to us for oneto-one help, both because of our own pedagogies and because of our roles within our institutions. We would ordinarily try hard not to tell students which series of choices might work best for them. This leaves us in conflict between our institutional best practices and the best practices for the individual student. However, Asperger’s support personnel offer a model which might help us view this predicament from within our existing pedagogical framework: as an opportunity to help students negotiate that series of choices. As Ann Palmer suggests in Realizing the College Dream with Autism or Asperger Syndrome: A Parent’s Guide to Student Success, even in cases where students are so overwhelmed that they do not know what to do or where to begin, the role of the tutor (writing or other) should never become to tell the student what to do; instead our role is to help the student “problem-solve and make decisions,” to help the student “understand a problem and analyze [the] choices” (2006, 115). Although the context is unusual and the extent of the task is significant, this advice corresponds fairly well to a writing center’s overall mission. If students show up with no ideas about where to begin their work, tutors can help them understand how to break the assignment down into a series of manageable steps, weigh the possible options, and work through the steps, without imposing their own goals or agendas on students’ choices, without making the choices for students. Here, although this discussion began with advice that seems to conflict with our best practices, the advice for professional tutors working with students with AS sounds very similar to best practices advice for writing tutors and teachers in general. The difference lies in how much help students might need, not in the type of help they might need. One of the best known characteristics of Asperger’s Syndrome is the person’s overwhelming engagement with and passion for a specific topic. Children and adults with AS often obsessively study and memorize arcane and exotic subjects—train and bus schedules, washing machine specifications, or the birthdates of all the members of Congress (Osborne 2000). This passion often causes significant social friction for students with AS, especially when their interests do not overlap with (or are several degrees of magnitude more intense than)

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the interests of their peers. Luke Jackson, the British, then-pre-teen author of Freaks, Geeks, and Asperger’s Syndrome, asks professionals to use the term “favourite subject” rather than obsession, and he decries the unfairness of his being singled out for teasing because of his favorite subject (computers). He notes that most of the boys in his school have a special interest—but since they’re all interested in the same thing, soccer, their non-stop soccer chatter and constant interest seem ordinary and unremarkable to them ( Jackson 2003, 45-47). These special interests are often a source of great joy and profound curiosity for students with AS. Their passions will, for some fortunate students, become their major areas of study in college and even their vocations. In addition to wanting to learn as much as possible about their “special subject,” students with AS often feel compelled to share their passion, and the information they have accumulated on their subject, with others. Many programs for autism-spectrum students, including the TEACCH program, try to use the child’s special interests as a way to get them to learn about anything and everything. Students’ interests in their own special topics provide the motivation that can allow other sorts of learning to take place peripherally, almost casually. In some important ways, then, the composition pedagogy behind the inquiry ideal, the philosophy that encourages students to, above all, become engaged with their writing topics, meshes quite nicely with advice given to educators who work with these AS strategies. Many writing programs encourage students to find something they can really care about to use as paper topics. College composition teachers struggle to capture students’ engagement by assigning material that they hope will easily spark the students’ interest, and they further hope that this interest and enthusiasm will transfer to a more general engagement with the writing process, beginning with a specific paper, and then becoming part of their general writing style and method. At many colleges, composition programs offer writing courses with special topics (even the wording is the same) designed to increase writers’ ability to engage with the material. These special topics, while sometimes based on teachers’ own passions, are often chosen with teachers’ perceptions of students’ interests in mind, or our perceptions of what students are likely to find engaging once they begin their coursework. At my university, during the Spring 2010 semester, writing courses were being offered on, among other topics, fast food, social media,

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peace, love, Bob Marley, gender, play, film, poetry, science fiction, and vampires. Composition instructors are often pleased and surprised when they find students so engaged with their topics that sharing their ideas becomes genuinely important to them. Here, again, the two approaches meld nicely. Both in composition and in support for students with Asperger’s Syndrome, teachers hope to create a special interest or harness an interest the student already possesses and, in this way, to turn students’ passions to our own pedagogical purposes. Even the student with AS who focuses primarily on washing machine specifications might transfer that interest to a series of papers on engineering or social history or the history of technological change in the home. There are few topics so esoteric or obscure that they cannot fit into some already acceptable university discipline, thus legitimizing students’ interests to readers other than themselves, perhaps for the first time. Many of the authors who write about Asperger’s Syndrome note that universities exist to encourage people in their special interests. Liane Holliday Willey, in Pretending to Be Normal: Living with Asperger’s Syndrome, wonders “where else but in college can you obsess on your interests and get rewarded for doing so? … In other words, where else could you bang your own drum so loudly?” (1999, 133) Both Leo Kanner, who first identified autism, and Hans Asperger, who described what later became known as Asperger’s Syndrome, recognized the positive potential value of special interests. Kanner noted that “[s]pecial interests in music, memory or mathematics had, in a significant number of cases, led to the development of valuable work related skills;” Asperger wrote about an “individual with a childhood fascination with mathematics [who] subsequently became an assistant professor in a university department of astronomy, despite severely impaired social skills, after having proved a mathematical error in Newton’s work” (both qtd. in Howlin 2004, 168). Others have noted the prevalence of AS “types” on college campuses: In many ways, university life and autism may be eminently suited. Anyone who works in higher education will be familiar with members of academic staff who seem more at home among their books than in the company of people. It may be that the stereotype of the ‘absent-minded professor’ is itself a tell-tale sign of the prevalence of [undiagnosed] AS at work in higher education. (Luckett and Powell 2003, 163)

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These authors imply that special interests—a core requirement for college professors or researchers—comprise one of the qualities that set academics apart. Their descriptions may help us conceptualize AS and understand the syndrome as a spectrum of behaviors, some remarkably visible and “normal” to those of us who spend time on college campuses. Tutors at writing centers that cater to graduate student and faculty writers already work with writers whose knowledge on a specific topic is unusually specialized and detailed. These are, after all, the prerequisites for a dissertation or scholarly article. At the Writing Center at the University of Miami, I’ve read an entire dissertation about Prokofiev piano sonatas and another about an obscure 16th century religious mystic, surely two examples of arcane and esoteric knowledge. However, these are not—and were not presented as—examples of dysfunction but as typical samples of the way universities function. While it is unusual to see such overwhelming intellectual engagement in undergraduates, especially first-year students, the mindset of intense intellectual engagement is a familiar one in most writing centers and typically represents advanced independent work, rather than neurological dysfunction. Writing center tutors are uniquely positioned to help all students— on and off the spectrum—see how they can share their unique interests through their written expression. We can help students learn how to use writing to achieve a depth of communication—with a potentially receptive audience—seemingly impossible through other means. For students who come in to the writing center with prompts or early drafts, or students who are looking for direction for their papers, writing center tutors can help find the best way to use students’ own interests and engagements in service of their writing projects. Unlike professors and instructors, who rarely have time to spend working through all the possible paper topics for each of their students, we at writing centers can spend time with students, helping them connect their special interests with their assigned work. If we can do that, we will have performed a lasting service for any student. Thus student autonomy and special interests are two areas in which existing writing center and composition pedagogy mesh surprisingly well with advice given by autism professionals. One area that might be more challenging, however, is in the interpersonal sphere. Muriel Harris writes that most writing centers “are committed to

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individualized instruction, to taking the student out of the group and to looking at her as an individual, as a person with all her uniqueness” (1995, 31). To that aim, most writing centers try to build a casual, welcoming atmosphere. Tutors hope to provide a friendly, supportive tone, often by making little jokes or friendly overtures. However, the primary manifestation of AS or related conditions is difficulty in understanding and responding to this sort of social interaction. Often the very idea of sharing a problem with a tutor proves so anxiety-provoking that students would hesitate to come to the center asking for help. Ann Palmer writes that “many students on the autism spectrum have difficulties initiating conversations and explaining to others about the problems they may be having” (2006, 114). Thus a student with Asperger’s Syndrome, even more than students in the general population, might feel unwilling, or even unable, to take advantage of writing center services. The welcoming, collaborative space of the writing center might not appear as welcoming to students who find personal interaction more difficult than organic chemistry or differential equations. Those students with autism who do visit the writing center must confront the serious concern of what Dawn Prince-Hughes calls the “overwhelming intensity of face-to-face conversation” (2002, xiii). Writing centers pride themselves on their ability to offer one-to-one interaction—one of writing centers’ great strengths. Yet this interaction is not always as welcoming as we might hope. Theresa Jolliffe provides some insight into the barriers AS set up for her own doctoral education, especially in terms of one-to-one interaction: “Looking at people’s faces, particularly into their eyes, is one of the hardest things for me to do … .People do not appreciate how unbearably difficult it is for me to look at a person … .It disturbs my quietness and is terribly frightening” (qtd. in Howlin 2004, 99). The intensity of oneto-one interaction frightens some students with AS when meeting faculty members or peers, two of the groups from which tutors are often comprised. One-to-one interaction, especially with an authority figure, necessitates many of the types of contact that prove difficult for students with AS, while one-to-one interaction with a peer tutor presents a variety of considerations about socially appropriate conversation, gestures, and personal space that the student likely already struggles with in other arenas. The close proximity of the student and tutor; the physical intensity of eye contact; the stress of conversational

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give-and-take; and the dangers of misinterpreting social cues—all are anxiety triggers for many people with AS, and anxiety is no small issue.2 As many posts to the Writing Center listserv, WCenter, can attest, reluctance to come to the Writing Center, even for students who need significant assistance, is another characteristic shared by many students. Presumably, fear of personal interaction is not as much of a factor for students off the spectrum; however, fear of the type of personal interaction where a student is revealing perceived inadequacies or sensitive issues to an unknown peer or professor is hardly unheard of. The element of exposure necessarily present in the writing center dynamic proves difficult for many students to overcome. Tutors—whether faculty, graduate student, or peers—often try to create a friendly atmosphere by asking personal questions or sharing personal information, and students with AS might worry about reacting appropriately to these overtures. If the student possesses the types of additional interpersonal difficulties commonly co-morbid with AS, such as prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize someone based on his/her facial features, the tutor might think they have established an on-going relationship, while the student might not be aware that he or she is even working with the same tutor as on the last visit. Similarly, students with AS might not pick up on tutors’ attempts at humor, especially sarcasm, or might assume, from many years of experience, that they, themselves, are the butt of any joke. Thus social interaction, part of the writing center’s most cherished practices, forms one of the most profound barriers for those students frightened by or anxious about such sensitive situations. Even if students with AS do not fear the social interactions necessary to function at most writing centers, they often do not excel at the skills related to such interactions. In Autism and Asperger Syndrome: Preparing for Adulthood, Patricia Howlin writes about the problems in communication often faced by those on the autism spectrum. She asserts that [T]he overriding problem, for almost everyone [with AS], and at whatever linguistic level they function, is the lack of reciprocity in their language: their failure to engage in normal conversations, 2 

See Stress and Coping in Autism for a useful collection of articles about the high levels of anxiety often experienced by people on the spectrum (Baron 2006).

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to listen to other people’s points of view, or to ‘chat’ simply for the pleasure of doing so … .They are rarely able to engage in the often inconsequential ‘chit-chat’ that is so important for normal social interaction; they often have little or no interest in the other person’s views and may be quite unaware of cues indicating that they are becoming boring, disrupting ongoing discussions or dominating the conversation in an unacceptable way. (2004, 79)

The ease with which most students and tutors use casual chit-chat to initiate, facilitate, extend, or end a conference or tutorial belies the complex rules of social engagement underlying such interaction, rules both difficult and daunting for someone who struggles with conversational skills. Students with AS successful enough to have made it to college will likely have been told repeatedly that they do not perform properly in social situations. They may also have faced many unpleasant social traumas throughout their educational histories and hesitate to put themselves into a position requiring a new or unusual set of social responses. Here the social element of the writing center conversation or conference magnifies the obstacles that might cause any student to hesitate before coming to a tutor. Although previous negative personal interactions seem likely to discourage students with AS from using writing centers, the writing center tutorial situation may naturally overcome some of the boundaries Howlin mentions. Students do not have to fear being boring or monopolizing the conversation in a tutorial; tutorials are usually designed to allow students to focus on their own topics, rather than the typically flowing topic shifts of regular conversation. Many students’ paper topics might be considered boring in general conversation, but part of the tutors’ job is to pay attention to other people’s paper topics, no matter how boring that topic might be to any individual tutor. On the other hand, however, it’s easy to imagine scenarios in which the behaviors Howlin alludes to do disrupt the writing center tutorial. For students who have “little or no interest in the other person’s views,” a writing center visit seems unlikely; presumably their lack of interest “in the other person’s views” would extend to what the other person had to say about their papers. Should students with that temperament visit the writing center, they would be the kind of visitors, rare, but not unheard of, that we often discuss in our orientations: the students who visit the writing center while seeming to have no interest

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in receiving any advice on their writing; or the students who come to writing centers for advice and then seem to resent being given advice. Despite the difficulties of resolving this dilemma—writing centers thrive on face-to-face interaction, while people with AS generally do not—there are some approaches that can minimize the difficulties. Liane Willey offers suggestions for educators applicable for both writing teachers and one-to-one interaction by writing center personnel: ••“Remember that people with AS have problems with abstract and conceptual thinking. Use very concrete examples and explanations, and literal and direct word meanings when you are explaining thoughts that involve high levels of problem solving skills; ••“Be prepared to hear some different kinds of discussions and questions from your AS student [or tutee]; ••“Realize that they are not intentionally trying to goad you or act out rude behavior. Know that weak social skills and an honest misunderstanding of the language or logic you might be using could very likely be at the root of these kinds of situations; ••“Avoid idioms, words with double meanings, sarcasm and subtle humor; ••“Know the AS person probably has difficulty reading nonverbal messages. Do not rely solely on these to convey your messages.” (1999, 165, bullet points added) This advice corresponds well to Julie Neff ’s advice to tutors whose subtle social cues do not seem to be having their intended effect: “Many people with learning disabilities are unable to “read” the nonverbal behavior of others. So even if the writing advisor frowns or looks away, the inappropriate behavior continues. Being explicit but positive will help the individual change this behavior: ‘Marty, please stop talking; I have something important to tell you’” (1994, 248). Willey’s suggestions require an extremely high level of self-awareness on the part of writing center tutors. Avoiding idioms, for example, might seem simple, but it is extremely difficult in practice, especially in extemporaneous conversation. In addition, tutors try hard to treat each student with respect and consideration. Newer tutors might find aspects of this advice especially difficult, as worry about second-guessing their own conversation adds on to the already daunting prospect of tutoring for the first time.

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Yet many of Willey’s words resonate beyond the AS tutorial. As Kiedaisch and Dinitz explain, many of the best pieces of advice for working with students who have special needs can be applied more generally to make writing centers more welcoming and successful for “a wide range of tutors and writers without having to separate out any individuals or groups as ‘different’” (2007, 56). For example, the suggestion to prepare ourselves to hear unusual discussions and questions seems straightforward and applicable to many situations beyond the parameters of this chapter’s discussion of AS. For writing centers located in diverse communities or at universities attracting large numbers of international students, or for writing centers which cater to non-traditional as well as traditional students, a broad-minded approach to “standard” conversational moves seems almost a prerequisite of the tutoring job. Similarly, the advice against sarcasm, although it will go against the grain for many tutors, strikes me personally as a generally good suggestion. At my university, I have frequently advised fellow teachers against using sarcasm in the classroom, except, perhaps, self-deprecating sarcasm. Although many students enjoy a teacher with a sharp tongue, other students find it disrespectful and inappropriate, even if the teacher is generally well-meaning, and complaints about sarcastic teachers tend to show up on student evaluations. Lynette Henderson, in “Asperger’s Syndrome in Gifted Individuals,” echoes Willey’s “social advice” for education and support personnel working with AS students at all levels. She advises educators to above all “be sincere. Subtlety, duplicity, or sarcasm only adds to an AS person’s confusion and fears of incompetence” (2005, 70). Myriam, another contributor to Aquamarine Blue 5, suggests a strategy that helped her during her college experience and seems useful for a writing center conference. She stresses the importance of counter-questions when working individually with students with AS. She notes that this “aspect of communications seems so obvious, that a lot of people can forget. But: first, the counter-question is the key for understanding. Second, it is one way to say to another person that she or he is interesting, is valued by thinking of her/him” (2002, 63). Myriam offers the same advice to both student and teacher. She advises the student with autism to

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Questioning is, of course, a standard strategy used in writing center tutorials. Sometimes, however, out of fear of offending a student with a disability, a tutor might hesitate to ask questions that might seem obvious or insulting. For students on the autism spectrum, however, direct and specific questions are more useful than vague or open-ended questions. This technique might also prove especially difficult for novice and/or peer tutors. However, Ann Palmer notes that Asking the right questions is crucial for the service provider to be able to help the student on the autism spectrum. A general, “How are things going?” kind of question will not typically get much of a response from a student. The student may answer, “Fine” or “OK” and not elaborate on details about the class. If the service provider really wants to know about a student’s progress in a course, they must ask more specific questions about the course or about the assignments. Questions about a particular paper or test will often produce more useful information from the student and possibly a better understanding of how the student is doing in the class or whether they understand the material. (2006, 114)

Once again, this advice reiterates common writing center practices, but takes them further. Tutors and teachers often use written materials to gauge a student’s grasp of the course materials, and asking about the former as a means of gauging the latter works nicely as an extension of current conferencing strategies. Here again, the specific strategy suggestions sound familiar, even obvious, and relevant to all students, not just those on the autism spectrum. However, it’s the extent of the application of the strategy, the need for tutors to be conscious in their use of the strategy that makes it bear repeating. For a student with a physical disability, the scope of the support needed may be easier to delineate. For a student on the autism spectrum, which often manifests as a social disability, tutors may be uncertain as to how far they should respond. Although most of the other advice mentioned so far seems relevant to any student—on or off the AS spectrum—there are some AS

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characteristics that are more difficult to address. One such difficulty may be the physical environment of the writing center. Writing centers which contain fluorescent lighting, open spaces, and/or multiple conversations happening simultaneously around the room, can be very difficult spaces for those with a tendency towards sensory overload. The hum and flicker of fluorescent lighting, for example, has been shown to be a major source of distraction for those with autism spectrum disorders. Temple Grandin explains how some people are able to tune out extraneous noises so they can focus and function, even using a telephone in a noisy airport. She, however, like many others with autism spectrum disorders, has difficulties screening out the irrelevant noises from the relevant conversation (Grandin, 2000). These might seem like minor annoyances, but to a person with AS, these may be serious sensory problems. Sensory stimulation can overwhelm people with AS, who may not be able to overcome the distractions of a classroom or studio fully enough to work productively on a paper. Sensory overload can come from odors, lighting, or sound, from the placement of tables around a room or from the aftershave worn by a tutor or another student. Joyce Davidson, after reading 45 autobiographical writings from people with autism, notes that “Attention to lighting is obviously crucial, and while incandescent lighting can be prohibitively costly, authors’ accounts strongly suggest that it should be considered as perhaps the most straightforward way of creating more accessible environments [for people with autism]” (2010, 310). Writing center staff should also know that physical touch often triggers sensory overload for people with autism. Institutional sexual harassment policies, official and unofficial, have sensitized instructors and tutors at all levels to the potential inappropriateness of hugs and other physical touches, but for some people with autism, touches much less significant than a hug can feel like a considerable intrusion. Even a minor shoulder tap, (which many of us occasionally use, even when advised not to by writing center directors) can be highly unnerving to some people on the autism spectrum. Willey explains how touch affects her: even the light touch of her own husband makes her feel as though there are “bugs under [her] skin,” and when her husband interlocks his fingers with hers, she feels as though her fingers are “being torn apart” (1999, 84). This aversion to touch is a common (although not ubiquitous) and serious concern for those on the autism

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spectrum, and tutors should know that a light and friendly touch can sometimes be perceived as a gross invasion of personal space. For most writing centers, the physical components of our environments will not be especially malleable. Although American colleges make an effort to comply with ADA regulations about ramps, sidewalks, and accessible doorways, those are not the types of environmental difficulties students with AS tend to struggle with. Whereas ramps, as opposed to stairs, are understood components of disabilityfriendly buildings, soft lighting and noise-reducing cubicles are unlikely to be seen that way in the foreseeable future; thus remedying the situation many not be high on most schools’ priority lists. Writing center administrators could try to limit distracting visual decorations and sounds in our physical spaces, but limiting cell phone distractions or directing the dress and grooming decisions of tutors and other students requires a new way of thinking about our influence over the writing center spaces. Joyce Davidson writes that ways to make environments less “sensorially toxic for those on the spectrum could be considered rather intuitive,” and her suggestions that invite us to consider limiting scents, such as dry-erase markers and industrial cleaners, seem reasonable. She describes these as part of an attempt to “think with, rather than simply about, disability, and so support arguments in favor of a relational approach to accessibility, one that recognizes and respects, rather than denies or derides, differences of whatever kind” (2010, 310). On-line writing tutorials seem an obvious solution to many of the difficulties discussed above, and, indeed, online instruction has much to offer students with AS, especially in reviewing completed papers. In fact, the internet has become a great source of community to some people with AS, many of whom, unnerved by the speed of face-toface conversation, prefer the online milieu’s more adjustable pace of communication. Many people with AS “prefer to interact with others via the written rather than spoken word” and especially look to online resources for that interaction (Davidson 2010, 307). Online tutorials, especially asynchronous tutorials, offer some significant advantages—students do not have to negotiate the physical space of the writing center or even the campus, students do not have to manage the physical proximity or verbal conversations, and students often do not have to conform to a typical class or writing center schedule. Online tutorials address

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many of these same concerns for a variety of populations, including commuter students, working students, and students with other disabilities. Mark Mabrito, in “Email Tutoring and Apprehensive Writers: What Research Tells Us,” points to the potential of on-line tutorials to help ease the stress of writing instruction for highly anxious writers. Although the population he discusses is anxious specifically about their writing skills and interacting with others regarding their writing, his advice resonates in this discussion as well, where the anxiety levels of writers might be equally high, although triggered by the personal interaction itself, rather than the interaction’s focus. Mabrito suggests that online writing centers can function as a “less traumatic arena” for students who are anxious about writing tutorials, and that “such an environment might reduce these writers’ feelings of anxiety toward the evaluation process and might make them more willing to participate in the process as writers” (Mabrito 2000, 146). Mabrito also mentions some of the general benefits of on-line tutorials, such as the written records of the discussions, that can be positive for anxious and confident students alike. But on-line tutorials may not be able to address the issues most likely to be problematic for students with AS, such as breaking down an assignment into manageable bits, understanding the assignment, or interpreting a professor’s comments for revision. These tasks all involve a conversational give-and-take not available in the two-day turnaround of many online tutorials. The counter-questions method, for example, would confound an asynchronous tutoring environment, with questions e-mailed and responses delayed. Synchronous tutoring, with instant messaging or other instantaneous conversational capability, offers the potential for asking questions and, combined with scanning technology, reviewing a teacher’s comments for revision, with tutee and tutor together only virtually. This communication would then mimic the more fast-paced communication of a face-to-face session, however, which is one of the difficulties with the in-person tutorials. In addition, the technology itself does not address the issues of being willing to ask for help or realizing when help is needed, but it seems a potential safe haven for students with AS who need and want writing center tutorials but would like to avoid the stress of social interaction. It remains to be seen whether students with AS

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will gravitate towards on-line learning, and this seems like a potential trend for future research. Despite all the discussion about how AS might negatively impact a student’s college experience, it may also turn out that Asperger’s Syndrome confers some benefits to college writers. At the CARD Conference, a presenter (who was currently a college student with Asperger’s Syndrome) was asked about whether he had ever visited his campus’s writing center. He replied that he had never felt the need to because college writing had “just seemed to come naturally” to him (Rounds 2006). Darius, mentioned above—who saw an advantage in not assuming that other people think the way he does—also pointed to some other possible advantages of his “condition,” including strengths in reasoning logically, dissecting arguments, and remaining unswayed by “smooth talk” (Prince-Hughes 2002, 39). Some of this commentary, especially the presumption of enhanced logical reasoning, is a popular refrain in autism literature. Phrases such as Temple Grandin’s assertion that she sometimes feels like an “anthropologist on Mars,” reflect, similarly, the frequently noted awareness that persons with AS often have to learn to compensate for their cognitive distinctness from the “neurotypical” population (Sacks 1995). As Darius noted, the feeling that a writer has to make an effort to understand how a reader might react is valuable, and key to many discussions of “understanding your audience” stressed in composition classes and at writing centers. Jay Dolmage notes in “Mapping Composition: Inviting Disability in the Front Door” that “foreignness and irrationality are two of the most commonly applied metaphors for people with [all types of ] disability in the history of the Western world” (2008, 19). Dolmage’s piece, like Kiedaisch and Dinitz’ piece, urges teachers and studios to consider a Universal Design for Learning which includes disability as an always present part of an educator’s worldview, rather than as a response or “retrofit” to a particular abnormal situation. Along with the increases in diagnosis of AS or other autism spectrum diagnoses (ASD) has come a great increase in services and early intervention. Indeed, in his recent book, Unstrange Minds, anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker points to the promises of increased diagnosis. Starting from a proposition that much of today’s increased diagnosis is based on improved diagnosis and cultural changes rather than increased incidence, Grinker suggests that better and earlier diagnoses have the potential to help today’s children with ASD reach their

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full potential far better than at any time in the past. In a convincing presentation at the University of Miami’s CARD Center (and in his book), Grinker discussed many of the socio-cultural factors that have made today’s diagnoses of ASD more likely to be given, more acceptable to hear, and more readily responded to with treatment than they had been, even in the recent past. Two of the many striking factors of change Grinker points to are a diagnosis of “childhood schizophrenia” that was popular in the 1950s but has disappeared today; and the social stigma previously associated with autistic children and their “refrigerator mothers,” who were made to feel responsible for their child’s condition and were likely to have their children taken away and institutionalized should they pursue an autism diagnosis (Grinker 2007). The improvements in diagnosis and treatment will continue to increase alongside our current social awareness of AS and related disorders. Therapy today often starts for children three or four years old, geared towards teaching a “theory of mind.” Pediatric neuropsychologist Bonnie Aberson, co-author of How to Raise and Teach a Thinking Child: Helping Young Children Think about What They Do and Why, argues that the brains of children this young still have the capacity to form new neural pathways; in other words, even children who struggle socially can be taught empathy. It is possible, she suggests, to retrain children’s brains while the brains’ pathways are still malleable (Aberson 2001). Because of these changes in approach, the students diagnosed with AS today are likely to have (and anticipate) fewer difficulties and greater successes than their predecessors, and they will start learning compensation strategies in kindergarten, or even earlier. Other studies have suggested similarly positive outcome potentials for the types of early and effective interventions that are becoming more common in elementary schools. Serena Weider and Stanley Greenspan performed a long-term (10-15 year) study which concluded that students with early intervention are sometimes “learning to engage, communicate, and think creatively and reflectively with high levels of emotional understanding and empathy” and that this learning is enhanced in later years (2005, 44). Thus while we at writing centers are working to refine our best practices, ever-increasing numbers of educators and support personnel are also refining their own best practices. All of this suggests that, unlike yesterday’s students, tomorrow’s students with autism will feel more comfortable in educational environments, more

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confident about their skills, abilities, and potentials, and less traumatized by their interactions with uninformed educators.

Conclusion Whereas Jurecic’s “Neurodiversity” called for teachers to “expand our sense of the depth and reach of difference” in students with AS, I hope I have shown how these differences, while real, are in most areas more a matter of degree than kind (2007, 439). All of the significant barriers writing professionals face when working with students on the spectrum should sound familiar. Understanding audience, learning how to negotiate writing choices, and knowing when and how to ask for help are all difficulties we work through every day in our writing centers. As a teacher, writing center director, and parent, I believe that we do students a disservice by increasing our distance from them, by seeing them as alien others, or by defining them by their neurological pathways. Students with AS will become colleagues with AS and friends with AS and parents with AS, and we would do well to focus on these students’ “creative potential” rather than deficiencies, just as we try to do with all of our students. In addition, while Jurecic clearly recognizes the danger in such a move, I believe her focus on understanding and empathizing with neurological difference overly stigmatizes students who have the potential, neurological or otherwise, to learn many of the behaviors their neurology is supposed to be unequipped for (2006, 1). In “Mindblindness” Jurecic states this in absolutist terms: She is trying to “make contact across a neurological divide” (2006, 2). “Gregory’s neurology limits his comprehension of irony” (2006, 2). “To a greater degree than we may be comfortable with, [Grandin’s] writing is shaped by her neurology … . She cannot help but embed her neurological story in the very voice of her autobiography” (2006, 17). Statements like this normalize Jurecic’s subject position; that she is trying to make contact seems to disregard the efforts that many people on the spectrum make every day. The statements also make Jurecic seem unaware of the extent to which an AS diagnosis is a cultural creation and disregards the potential effects of education, intervention, and cultural change. I am not, nor are the researchers mentioned above, suggesting that AS disorders can be cured or entirely ameliorated by intervention, or that they should be; however, it is clear that we are in the early stages of learning how to best address the needs of people on the autism

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spectrum, and that advances are occurring that a strictly determinist neurological stance will not allow us to anticipate. Part of my reaction to Jurecic’s arguments is that I see them as circumscribing and limiting students on the basis of our notions of their potential. My son Jacob, for example, who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and who is very clearly on some point of the autism spectrum, exhibits many of the characteristics people with autism are supposed to be unable to manage—empathy, physical affections, conversation, friendships—and more. I would not want to minimize the difficulties he faces, or those faced by other students with autism—in college or in the writing center—but Jurecic’s approach seems too set in defining people by their neurology, which strikes me as profoundly disturbing. I much prefer the approach Michael Bérubé proposes, in “Citizenship and Disability” (2003). Writing about disability, especially in children, he proposes that it “might be a good idea for all of us to treat other humans as if we do not know their potential, as if, they might in fact surprise us, as if they might defeat or exceed our expectations.” Bérubé posits this approach as “one way of recognizing and respecting something you might want to call our human dignity” (2003, 240). As we at writing centers work on learning best practices in working with students on or off the spectrum, the culture around us is also changing. Literature written by people on the spectrum often points to the potential of this cultural change to significantly lessen the social isolation of people on the spectrum, thus increasing their chances for social interaction and the cognitive give-and-take social interaction provides. When asked about his condition, tenth-grader Justin Mulvany points to the way conditions for people with AS depend as much on social awareness as early intervention: “People don’t suffer from Asperger’s” Justin says. “They suffer because they’re depressed from being left out and beat up all the time” (Harmon 2004). Perhaps some of the social deficits will lessen as people become more aware of others’ social difficulties. One way this is happening is through the explosion of media coverage of autism and autism spectrum disorders. There are now dozens of books by people with AS, some intended for and reaching mainstream audiences. Given the way AS disorders are becoming better understood and more visible, I am hopeful that the writers reaching our writing centers a few years from now will have had very different experiences than our current and former students, experiences which leave them less stigmatized and less alienated.

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For now, however, the general practices discussed above should help writing center tutors respond to their clients both on and off the spectrum. Most of the advice offered above could be considered advanced forms of the work we already do at the Writing Center: advanced listening, advanced questioning, even providing advanced forms of empathy, understanding, and nonjudgmental responses. Similarly, the need to be more self-aware of our own tutoring practices, to avoid using sarcasm or taking students’ behavior personally, requires, primarily, an awareness of the difficulties some people have in interpersonal interaction, rather than special training or innovative techniques. For the more unusual issues—the sensory sensitivity, for example—there are no easy answers. Avoiding casual touch can help, trying to eliminate extraneous sounds can help, but that is about as far as writing center directors can go. We really do not have the ability or inclination to try to create an environment where neither the tutors nor the other students use body sprays or smell like cigarettes. Despite these limitations, I find it encouraging that most of our practices align so well with the practices suggested by autism professionals. Dawn Prince-Hughes, editor of Aquamarine Blue 5, points to the special place of writing in the communication of people with Asperger’s Syndrome. She notes that “the autistic people who have contributed here [in her collection] have all expressed a belief that writing is the best way for an autistic person to communicate … . It allows time to form one’s thoughts carefully, it has none of the overwhelming intensity of face-to-face conversation, and it affords the writer space to talk about one question or thesis without limit” (Prince-Hughes 2002, xiii). Thus, in some important ways, writing may be well aligned with the strengths of some of our students with Asperger’s Syndrome, and writing professionals should make sure their classrooms and other facilities are as welcoming as possible to support this crucial form of self-expression. Today’s diagnosis of autism-spectrum disorder does not preclude a college education. If anything, the more we learn about the potential of high-functioning students with autism, the more important their success in college becomes. Prince-Hughes points out that accommodation works for the benefit of the institution as well. As we learn more about the disorder it becomes even more apparent that “highly functioning autistic people are irreplaceable members of the academy” (Prince-Hughes 2002, xxiii). Primarily, however, she stresses the

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crucial role of college in the life of a person with autism. She compiled Aquamarine Blue 5 to help improve AS “accommodation in the university community,” because she doesn’t want to see the potential of students with AS wasted, a waste seen in some of the more wrenching testimonials in her collection. In a plea that should resonate with the mission of all writing center tutors, or any support personnel at a college or university, Prince-Hughes asks us to help ensure that “promising students with special needs [are not] pushed from the one place that can maximize our potential and give our lives meaning” (2002, xviii).

References Aberson, Bonnie. 2001-2005. Interviews, Miami, FL. American Psychological Association. 1994. 299.80 Asperger’s Disorder. In Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. http://www.psychiatryon- line.com/content.aspx?aID+7667&searchStr=asperger’s+disord er. Baron, Grace M., ed. 2006. Stress and coping in autism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bérubé, Michael. Spring 2003. Citizenship and disability. Dissent Magazine. Darius. 2002. Darius. In Aquamarine blue 5, ed. Dawn Prince-Hughes. Athens, OH: Swallow Press. Davidson, Joyce. 2010. ‘It cuts both ways’: A relational approach to access and accommodation for autism. Social Science & Medicine 70, (2) (1): 305-12. Dolmage, Jay. 2008. Mapping composition: Inviting disability in the front door. In Disability and the teaching of writing: a critical sourcebook., ed. Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Brenda Jo Brueggemann. Dunn, Patricia. 1995. Learning re-abled: The learning disability controversy and composition studies. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Heinemann. Frankenberger, Caryl. 1989. Non-verbal learning disabilities: An emerging profile. In NLD on the Web. http://www.nldontheweb.org/frankenberger.html. Grandin, Temple. 2000. My experiences with visual thinking, sensory problems, and communication difficulties. In autism.org. http://www.autism. org/temple/visual.html. Grinker, Roy Richard. 2007. Unstrange minds: Remapping the world of autism. New York: Basic Books.

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Happé, Francesca, and Angelica Ronald. 2008. The ‘fractionable autism triad’: A review of evidence from behavioral, genetic, cognitive, and neural research. Neuropsychology Review 18, (4) (12): 287-304. Harmon, Amy. 2004. How about not ‘curing’ us, some autistics are pleading. New York Times, December 20, 2004. Harpur, John, Maria Lawlor, Michael Fitzgerald, and Net Library, Inc. 2004. Succeeding in college with Asperger syndrome: A student guide. in Jessica Kingsley [database online]. London; New York, 2004. http://www. netLibrary.com/urlapi.asp?action=summary&v=1&bookid=100722; Materials specified: Bibliographic record display. Note: An electronic book accessible through the World Wide Web. Harris, Muriel. 1995. What’s up and what’s in: Trends and traditions in writing centers. In Landmark essays on writing centers., ed. Christina Murphy and Joe Law, 27-36. Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press. Henderson, Lynnette M. 2005. Asperger’s syndrome in gifted individuals. In Teaching gifted students with disabilities., ed. Susan K. Johnsen and James Kendrick, 63. Waco, Texas: Prufrock Press. High-functioning vs. low-functioning autism astrid’s journal. 2007. http://astridvanwoerkom.wordpress.com/2007/04/06/ high-functioning-vs-low- functioning-autism/. Howlin, Patricia. 2004. Autism and Asperger syndrome: Preparing for adulthood. 2nd ed. London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Jackson, Luke. 2003. Freaks, geeks and Asperger syndrome: A user guide to adolescence. London; New York: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Jurecic, Ann. 2007. Neurodiversity. College English 69, (5): 421-42. ———. 2006. Mindblindness: Autism, writing, and the problem of empathy. Literature and Medicine 25, (1): 1-23. Kiedaisch, Jean, and Sue Dinitz. 2007. Changing notions of difference in the writing center: The possibilities of universal design. The Writing Center Journal 27, (2): 39-59. Lewiecki-Wilson, Cynthia, and Brenda Jo Brueggemann. 2008. Mapping composition: Inviting disability in the front door. In Disability and the teaching of writing: A critical sourcebook., ed. Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Brenda Jo Brueggemann, 14. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins. Lewiecki-Wilson, Cynthia, and Jay Dolmage. 2008. Comment. College English 70, (3) ( January 2008): 314--319. Living with autism: Nobody likes to be labeled. 2010. Autism Spot. http:// www.autismspot.com/blog/Living-Autism-Nobody-Likes-to-be-Labeled.

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Luckett, Tim, and Stuart Powell. 2003. Students with autism and Asperger’s syndrome. In Special teaching in higher education: Successful strategies for access and inclusion., ed. Stuart Powell. London: Kogan Page. Mesibov, Gary B. 2006. Learning styles of students with autism: Developing educational programs to match learning needs. Paper presented at Center for Autism and Related Disorders Annual Conference, in Tampa, FL. Murphy, Christina, and Joe Law. 1995. Introduction to Landmark essays on writing centers, eds. Christina Murphy and Joe Law, xi-xvi. Davis CA: Hermagoras Press. Myriam. 2002. Myriam. In Aquamarine blue 5, ed. Dawn Prince-Hughes. Athens, OH: Swallow Press. Neff, Julie. 1994. Learning disabilities and the writing center. In Intersections: Theory- practice in the writing center, ed. Joan A. Mullin and Ray Wallace. Urbana, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English. new wave of autism rights activists, The. 2008. New York Magazine. http:// nymag.com/news/features/47225/. North, Steven. 1995. The idea of a writing center. In Landmark essays on writing centers., ed. Christina Murphy and Joe Law, 71-85. Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press. Osborne, Lawrence. 2000. The little professor syndrome. New York Times, June 18, 2000, sec Sunday Magazine. Palmer, Ann. 2006. Realizing the college dream with autism or Asperger syndrome: A parent’s guide to student success. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Prince-Hughes, Dawn, ed. 2002. Aquamarine blue 5: Personal stories of college students with autism. Athens, OH: Swallow Press. Prosopagnosia Research Center at Harvard University and University College London. 2007. http://www.faceblind.org/index.html. Richman, Lynn. 1998. Peaceful coexistence: autism, Asperger’s, hyperlexia. In hyperlexia.org. http://www. hyperlexia.org/ahawinter9697.html. Rounds, Cindy, and Tyler Rounds. 2006. Making the transition from school to the ‘real world’. Paper presented at Center for Autism and Related Disabilities Annual Conference, in Tampa, FL. Sacks, Oliver. 1995. An anthropologist on mars. In An anthropologist on mars. Vintage Books: New York. Wallis, Claudia. 2009. A vanishing diagnosis for Asperger’s syndrome. New York Times, November 2, 2009.

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Welkowitz, Lawrence A., and Linda J. Baker. 2005. Supporting college students with Asperger’s syndrome. In Asperger’s syndrome: Intervening in schools, clinics, and communities, ed. Linda J. Baker and Lawrence A.Welkowitz. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Wieder, Serena, and Stanley Greenspan. 2005. Can children with autism master the Core deficits and become empathetic, creative, and reflective? A ten to fifteen year follow up of a subgroup of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), who received a comprehensive developmental, individual difference, relationship based (DIR) approach. The Journal of Developmental and Learning Disorders 9: 39-61. Willey, Liane Holliday. 1999. Pretending to be normal: Living with Asperger’s syndrome. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

4 Recommended approaches to the neuroimaging literature on Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) for teachers of writing

Lynda Walsh & Cheryl Olman

I

Introduction

t has been an eventful decade for students diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and for the parents and professionals who support them. The now-discredited Wakefield studies on autism and vaccinations, coupled with the CDC’s (February 9, 2007) estimate that as many as one in 150 American children may be diagnosed with ASD, led to a period of intense public focus on autism: celebrities such as Jenny McCarthy formed foundations and lobbied Congress; Congress increased funding for autism research to nearly a billion dollars over five years; several memoirs and novels concentrating on autism, including Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, were published; and Temple Grandin was invited to give a prestigious TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talk. This flurry of media coverage has come along with a surge of interest in neuroimaging studies aimed at explaining some social behaviors attributed to ASD—such as expressions of intense interest in specific subjects, difficulty reading social cues, and trouble interpreting non-literal language (Levy, Mandell, and Schultz 2009)—by connecting them to particular brain areas and patterns of neural activation. The New York Times alone has published an average of three articles a year for the last eight years on Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) as a diagnostic

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instrument for understanding autism. This trend is part of a wider craze for neuroimaging: we are getting used to seeing fuzzy gray images of brains marked with bright spots provided as “explanations” of behavior from altruism to speed-dating. But when is this work truly explanatory, and when is it merely a sort of neo-phrenology that connects bright spots to behavior without sufficient justification? It is difficult for the non-specialist to answer this question. Most college writing teachers who instruct students with ASD do not have the time or expertise to read the primary literature on the neuroimaging of autism, nor to interview the scientists who conduct these studies. Therefore, to the extent that composition pedagogy is informed by current research on the causes and mechanisms of autism, it will likely draw that information from secondary accounts. Generally these secondary accounts are either “translations” of the research by education researchers or popular scientific accounts such as those in the New York Times or Scientific American. Drawing pedagogical conclusions from scientific studies of the brain structures and functions associated with ASD is an activity that should be undertaken with some caution, due to limitations within the methods of neuroimaging itself and to misrepresentations that unavoidably occur in the translations of these studies for popular formats. For example, a recent Scientific American article presented the hypothesis that autism is largely caused by dysfunction among a special group of neurons that allow primates to mimic actions they see in other primates (Ramachandran and Oberman 2006). Indeed, these “mirror” neurons are probably involved in the difficulties people with ASD experience in understanding the social gestures of other people, but the image that headed the article, of a little boy standing dejected in front of a broken mirror, both exaggerated the current scientific consensus on the role of these neurons in autism and injected an utterly unfounded emotional appeal into the argument. It is the goal of this article, co-authored by a neuroimaging specialist and a composition professor, to present college composition teachers first with a series of questions they should ask when reading popular accounts of neuroimaging studies of ASD and second with an expert interpretation of findings from this recent work that may have implications for the teaching of writing in three areas: “mirror neurons” and empathy, the interpretation of non-literal language, and interconnectedness of brain areas in individuals diagnosed with ASD.

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Questions & caveats for evaluating neuroimaging studies of language use in ASD Functional MRI or fMRI is a powerful new tool for imaging brain activity across time. It uses the oxygen content in blood to trace patterns of neural activity in participants’ brains as they perform behaviors such as looking at pictures, reading text, and sometimes making decisions about what they are reading or viewing (responses are usually indicated by pressing buttons on a keypad). Because the spatial precision of fMRI is an order of magnitude better than that of other neuroimaging techniques, psychologists and neuroscientists now overwhelmingly turn to fMRI to answer questions that begin with “What part of the brain is responsible for ...?”  However, evaluating the validity and utility of fMRI approaches to questions about ASD and communication skills requires an understanding of the fundamental assumptions woven into fMRI methodologies. What follows here is a series of questions that composition teachers should ask themselves when they read reports of neuroimaging results using fMRI, along with the reasons for asking these questions from the perspective of a neuroscientist (Olman). 1. What are researchers claiming to represent via visualizations of the fMRI signal in this study?  Researchers who use fMRI know that the “bright spots on brains” do not exactly represent thinking. Yes, the blood flow and oxygenation changes measured by an fMRI experiment are driven by changes in the local neural activity, and the software the researchers use reliably maps these changes to colored spots on images of the participants’ brains. However, a dozen different factors affect the linkage between neural activity and changes in local blood flow, so it is important remember that the mapped “bright spots” are, at best, a surrogate indication of the average level of neural activity in a given brain region. A further uncertainty about what exactly is causing bright spots is created by the sheer density of neurons in the areas being imaged. Each cubic millimeter of gray matter has between 20,000 and 40,000 neurons. Increased signaling from most of these neurons represents a function such as word recognition; but some neurons actually inhibit particular brain functions. The problem is that these opposite types of neurons are mixed together so that the fMRI signal may not be able to distinguish between them.  Until neuroscientists have developed a more precise understanding of the links between neural activity and

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the fMRI signal, it is important to view bright spots on brains with a small but healthy amount of suspicion, knowing that they may be either exaggerating or downplaying the neural activity they purport to represent. 2. Is the study drawing too many inferences from the presence or lack of neural activity in one or two brain areas? Complex behaviors such as those associated with language processing and the symptoms of autism often involve activities distributed throughout the brain. Be careful of believing claims about the neurological causes of ASD that are made on the basis of the failure of a particular brain area to light up in individuals with ASD during a particular task. Fortunately, the fMRI industry is shifting toward a more integrative view of brain information processing, and analysis techniques that study coordination between areas ( Just et al. 2004) as well as distributed activity within areas (Gilbert et al. 2009).  While it is true that different gray matter regions, or cortical areas, are specialized for representing different kinds of information or behavior, it is equally true any behavior more complex than a knee-jerk reflex is generated by coordinated activity in multiple cortical areas (Haxby et al. 2001).  Be cautious of studies that do not acknowledge this distribution of cognition. 3. How many participants with ASD were involved in the study? The more complex and less understood a certain set of human behaviors are—and ASD are both complex and poorly understood—the more participants are needed to ensure the validity of results.  Watch out for fMRI studies of ASD that enroll fewer than 12 participants.  Extrapolating from such limited studies to predict the behavior of a randomly selected ASD student, let alone the neural mechanisms serving that behavior, is unwise. Studies with more than 20 subjects provide more power to generalize to a larger population. However, given the complexity of ASD and the many subdivisions within this category, even these larger studies cannot be expected to be descriptive of a larger population. The reasons for the limitations on study size are obvious—at most institutions, it costs $500/hour to run a study, and studies take a minimum of an hour of scanner time. Recruiting MRI-compatible, age- and IQ-matched controls doubles the difficulty of running many participants through the scanner. Furthermore, the combined effects of claustrophobia, sleepiness, and restlessness render only 60-80% of the collected data usable. FMRI is therefore a difficult

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and expensive endeavor, and a researcher who has published a paper with 24 subjects and age-matched control has spent at least a year acquiring data, plus considerable additional time processing and analyzing those data.  So, individual studies are important but can rarely stand alone in helping us interpret the neurobiological basis of any psychological diagnosis. 4. How are the researchers arguing for connections between the neural images they observed and ASD behaviors? Because we cannot put electrodes in people’s brains and stimulate ASD behaviors, any causal connections that researchers make between the patterns of activity they record and actual human behaviors are conjectural.  All fMRI provides us with is a four-dimensional picture of brain activity that can be correlated along the axis of time with behaviors in participants with ASD. In most cases, psychologists have already made hypotheses about the causes of these behaviors, and fMRI studies are then employed rhetorically as evidence confirming or contesting those hypotheses.  Most of us learned in college psychology courses that “correlation is not causation.” Yet, pictures of bright spots on brains are compelling, and a common mistake we all make is to conclude that because a brain area “lights up” during a task, it is causing that behavior. As previously discussed, there are several pitfalls to avoid in making these connections. The fact that a brain area “lights up” only means that there was a change in the local neural state. With a single, indirect measurement of local neural activity (the fMRI signal), we must bear in mind the fact that many different and widely distributed changes in the brain could cause the reported changes in the fMRI signal. The interpretation of results always happens within a pre-existing theoretical framework, and almost any fMRI result is consistent with multiple theories. The wise reader will therefore view fMRI results as support for, rather than confirmation of, a given theory.

A targeted review of recent fMRI studies of ASD that relate to the teaching of composition Applying the questions/caveats listed above, we have conducted a review of the neuroimaging literature published in the last decade on composition-related ASD behaviors, with the goal of assisting college composition teachers who wish to understand this literature better.

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Among the foci of these studies, three in particular bear on the skills required in composition classrooms: mirror neurons and empathy, the processing of non-literal language, and neural connectivity. In each area, we will make cautious and limited recommendations for teaching high-functioning students with ASD in college writing classes. To date, there has been no research conducted on educational interventions at the post-secondary level, so all suggestions we offer are speculative—but they are well in line with established recommendations from the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) curricula for teaching students with special needs.

Relevant findings on mirror neurons, empathy, & ASD One of the truisms of autism research is that individuals with ASD often have difficulty reading social cues; in particular, they have a hard time empathizing with other people, which means essentially they have a hard time creating in their own minds a simulacrum or “mirror” of an emotional state that they perceive in someone else (Beversdorf et al. 1998). In the psychology tradition, these mirroring abilities are generally described via Theory of Mind (ToM), which tries to account for how individuals learn from and interact with others. Recent neuroimaging literature has identified a set of brain regions, termed the ToM network, likely to be involved in these behaviors (Mason and Just 2009). Another school of research on empathy and mirroring has concentrated on a similar network of neurons—the mirror neuron network. These neurons increase their activity when monkeys and humans mirror the hand movements and facial gestures of others. Some researchers believe these “mirror” neurons, due to their close association with speech areas in the brain, may have formed the evolutionary foundation of human language, as primates transferred their abilities to mimic motor movements they saw in their community to an ability to mimic speech sounds. Researchers in both schools have offered explanations for empathy deficits in individuals with ASD. The researchers who identified the ToM network attribute the empathy deficit in part to disruptions in that network (Mason et al. 2008); the mirror neuron researchers attribute it to a malfunction of these particular motor neurons (Iacoboni

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and Dapretto 2006). But as we discussed earlier, attempts to corral complex behaviors to a particular part of the brain are suspect, and it is likely that the differential empathetic behaviors observed in individuals with ASD involve many brain regions (Southgate and Hamilton 2008). While it is a convenient and instructive shorthand to remember that established brain-wide neural networks serve both ToM and mirror behaviors, and that these networks apparently function differently in ASD, fMRI data are insufficient to establish causal linkages between the function of a described brain network and observed behavior. Therapeutic interventions based on neuroimaging data are therefore a long way off. Composition teachers should simply be aware that students with ASD may have difficulty empathizing with others; therefore, they might have trouble performing audience analysis exercises intuitively. It may not be easy for students with ASD to make changes in written persuasive strategies based on hypothetical appeals to different audiences—for example, in an exercise that asks them to adopt different persuasive strategies to appeal to a group of schoolchildren versus a group of businesspeople in arguing for a community recycling program. In assignments such as this, which are very common in composition courses, instructors may wish to include an overt audience analysis step. Here, the instructor can assist the student with ASD in creating written profiles for the different audiences, and these can later serve the student as an explicit reference as s/he plans the argument’s support and appeals. If the student is required to analyze a conversation, say a dialogue from a movie, it may be helpful to provide the student with a transcript to refer to and to have other students help the student with ASD annotate the transcript with notes about what body language and facial expression contributes to the verbal conversation.

Relevant findings on non-literal language & ASD Understanding non-literal communication, such as metaphor and irony, requires the recruitment of extended networks in the brain. fMRI studies of the neurological activity attending metaphor processing have found increased activity not only in traditional language

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areas of the brain (most notably Broca’s area, which is associated with producing sentences) but also in areas not normally involved in reading literal communications (Lee and Dapretto 2005). Some of these regions are also active when people try to understand how sentences in a paragraph fit together (Ferstl and von Cramon 2001), so it seems that judging coherence and understanding non-literal sentences may be related cognitive activities. (Note that the brain regions recruited for understanding text structure also overlap with brain regions identified in ToM networks.) Non-literal language is ubiquitous in the composition classroom, both in the texts we have students read and in the very form of our instruction. Composition teachers often use metaphors to teach writing, particularly to teach strategies for writing paragraphs: witness the ubiquitous “inverted triangle” metaphor for the common structure of introductory paragraphs. Psychological and fMRI research suggests that these types of teaching metaphors, while efficient teaching strategies, may be particularly demanding for all students’ brains to process (Dennis, Lazenby, and Lockyer 2001). We now have a considerable body of evidence arguing that students with ASD will likely have difficulty processing non-literal language in classroom instruction and in literature. Nikolaenko (2004) found that children with Asperger’s Syndrome showed deficits in comprehending common metaphors as compared to a normal cohort. While Nikolaenko attributed this deficit to decreased activation of the right hemisphere, Lee and Dapretto (2005) could not replicate the result. Just et al. (2004) reconciled these seemingly contrary accounts through their finding that autistic participants displayed a different pattern of cortical activation across both hemispheres than did verbalIQ-matched controls. They and other researchers found that autistic participants had trouble using working memory during these tasks (Koshino et al. 2005). If the processing of metaphors and other non-literal language requires coordination of many diverse brain areas, and the brains of students with ASD are slower to connect these areas, then these students may well struggle to understand not only standard teaching metaphors such as the “inverted triangle” but also literary and spoken irony in the writing classroom. Whenever possible, then, composition instructors may wish to explain topics or assignments using explicit language as well as or instead of metaphorical language. For example,

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instead of explaining an introduction as an “inverted triangle,” instructors could explain it via a profile of explicit steps that individuals with ASD could point to in a text, such as Swales’s Moves: 1. an opening statement of why the paper’s topic is interesting, using a vivid example of interest from current media or scholarly argument; 2. a brief review of what is known about the topic; 3. an articulation of what still remains unknown or to be answered; and 4. a statement of what the paper will contribute to our understanding of the topic (Swales 1990).

Relevant findings on neural interconnectivity & ASD Metaphors’ dependence on coordination of multiple brain areas leads us to the current leading theory for the neurobiological basis of autism: that autism is not the failure of any particular brain area but rather a label we have given to the tendency of some people’s brains to favor intense processing in local networks over global coordination of brain activity. Müller’s (2007) review of recent neuroimaging studies articulated this consensus but cautioned against characterizing the brains of people with ASD as “underconnected,” as had Just et al. (2004). Müller called instead for further studies of how brain areas are connected through the white matter that supports the gray matter in our brains. Minshew and Williams’s review (2007) similarly concluded that autism affects coordination between brain hemispheres; however, they pointed out that savant-like abilities in individuals with ASD might result from intense activity in one hemisphere in a cortical region associated with, for instance, mathematical reasoning or musical aptitude. For the reasons mentioned above, we cannot draw any conclusions about the writing behavior of students with ASD from the theory that autism may be caused by atypical connectivity among brain regions needed for processing metaphors, coherence, empathy, and other demanding socio-communicative tasks. However, since studies demonstrate that individuals with ASD take more time to complete these tasks, composition instructors may consider breaking down a complex writing assignment, such as writing a research paper, into a series of small steps for students with ASD. Instructors may also wish to encourage students with ASD to research the audience, background, and context of the argument first, and to create an annotated bibliography

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of this information. That way, when it comes time to write the sections of the research paper, the student can minimize demands on memory by referencing background information in the bibliography.

Conclusions Neuroimaging and other psychological studies predict that students with ASD may experience challenges 1) directly relevant to their success in college composition: challenges in empathizing with the emotions and intentions of others, thereby missing out on a strategy that assists interpretation of texts; 2) challenges in understanding non-literal language; and, 3) challenges in recruiting background knowledge and other memory- or association-intensive sources of information to the reading/writing task at hand. Based on our review of recent neuroimaging studies, and on our caveats for the interpretation of this literature, we have speculated on some educational interventions: 1) avoiding metaphorical instruction; 2) providing instruction in multiple forms; 3) breaking complex writing tasks into small, concrete steps; 4) when audience analysis is required, conducting this activity in a guided and explicit form; and 5) representing background/contextual information in written form to ease memory load. Many of these suggestions corroborate the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a pedagogical system designed to help instructors accommodate students with a diverse range of abilities (Center for Applied Special Technology 2006; Taber 2006 ). The founding rationale of UDL is that multiplying the modes of instruction helps typically-developing students as well as students with disability diagnoses. A pedagogy motivated from these principles does not pathologize ASD or stigmatize students with this diagnosis, but rather acknowledges that our understanding of ASD is still very limited: therefore, it views the presence of ASD in the composition classroom not as a threat to be neutralized but rather as an occasion to improve the learning environment for every student.

References Beversdorf, D. Q., J. M. Anderson, S. E. Manning, S. L. Anderson, R. E. Nordgren, G. J. Felopulos, S. E. Nadeau, K. M. Heilman, and M. L. Bauman. 1998. The effect of semantic and emotional context on written recall for verbal language in high functioning adults with autism spectrum disorder. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 65 (5):685-92.

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Center for Applied Special Technology. 2007. Research and Development in Universal Design for Learning 2006 [cited March 1 2007]. Available from http://www.cast.org/index.html. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. February 9, 2007. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 56 (ss1). Dennis, M., A. L. Lazenby, and L. Lockyer. 2001. Inferential language in high-function children with autism. J Autism Dev Disord 31 (1):47-54. Ferstl, E. C., and D. Y. von Cramon. 2001. The role of coherence and cohesion in text comprehension: an event-related fMRI study. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res 11 (3):325-40. Gilbert, Sam J., Julia D. I. Meuwese, Karren J. Towgood, Christopher D. Frith, and Paul W. Burgess. 2009. Abnormal functional specialization within medial prefrontal cortex in high-functioning autism: a multi-voxel similarity analysis. Brain 132:869-878. Haxby, James V., M. Ida Gobbini, Maura L. Furey, Alumit Ishai, Jennifer L. Schouten, and Pietro Pietrini. 2001. Distributed and overlapping representations of faces and objects in ventral temporal cortex. Science 293:2425-2430. Iacoboni, M, and M. Dapretto. 2006. The mirror neuron system and the consequences of its dysfunction. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 7 (12):942-951. Just, M. A., V. L. Cherkassky, T. A. Keller, and N. J. Minshew. 2004. Cortical activation and synchronization during sentence comprehension in high-functioning autism: evidence of underconnectivity. Brain 127 (Pt 8):1811-21. Just, Marcel Adam, Vladimir L. Cherkassky, Timothy A. Keller, and Nancy J. Minshew. 2004. Cortical activation and synchronization during sentence comprehension in high-functioning autism: evidence of underconnectivity. Brain 127:1811-1821. Koshino, H., P. A. Carpenter, N. J. Minshew, V. L. Cherkassky, T. A. Keller, and M. A. Just. 2005. Functional connectivity in an fMRI working memory task in high-functioning autism. Neuroimage 24 (3):810-21. Lee, S. S., and M. Dapretto. 2005. Metaphorical vs. literal word meanings: fMRI evidence against a selective role of the right hemisphere. Neuroimage. Levy, Susan E, David S Mandell, and Robert T Schultz. 2009. Seminar: Autism. Lancet 374:1627-1638. Mason, R., and M.A. Just. 2009. The Role of the Theory-of-Mind Cortical Network in the Comprehension of Narratives. Language and Linguistics Compass 3 (1):157-174.

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Mason, Robert A., Diane L. Williams, Rajesh K. Kana, Nancy J. Minshew, and Marcel Adam Just. 2008. Theory of Mind disruption and recruitment of the right hemisphere during narrative comprehension in autism. Neuropsychologia 46 (1):269-280. Minshew, Nancy J., and Diane L. Williams. 2007. The new neurobiology of autism: cortex, connectivity, and neuronal organization. Archives of Neurology 64 (7):945-950. Müller, Ralph-Axel. 2007. The Study of Autism as a Distributed Disorder. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Review 13:85-95. Nikolaenko, N. N. . 2004. Metaphorical and Associative Thinking in Healthy Children and in Children with Asperger’s Syndrome at Different Ages. Human Physiology 30 (5):532-536. Ramachandran, V., and L. Oberman. 2006. Broken mirrors: A theory of autism. Scientific American:63-69. Southgate, V., and A.F. Hamilton. 2008. Unbroken mirrors: challenging a theory of autism. Trends in Cognitive Science 12 (6):225-229. Swales, John. 1990. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Taber, E. and Taber-Doughty, T. . 2006 The Student in the Shadows: Asperger’s Syndrome in the College Composition Classroom Paper read at College Conference on Composition and Communication, March 2326, at Chicago, Illinois.

Section II Pedagogy

5 Channeling the Enthusiasm Two Narratives of Teaching Students with asperger’s syndrome in Writing & Literature Classes, with Questions & Reflections

P

Kim Freeman

rior to 2004, I had not heard of Asperger’s Syndrome (AS), and then suddenly it was everywhere. I heard Temple Grandin interviewed about AS and animal communication in numerous venues, and I heard Dan Aykroyd talk about having it on the National Public Radio program Fresh Air (Aykroyd 2004). But most noticeably I had students with AS in my classes at a small Northeastern community college (not my present institutional home). Although there were only two students who told me they had been diagnoses with AS, one each semester, AS felt like some new force. My experience with these two students was eye opening, particularly because it forced me to consider classroom dynamics in new ways. For the sake of anonymity, I will call the fall-semester student Mary, and the spring-semester student I will call James. With Mary, the first student I knew to have AS, I felt a total failure. However, though it may sound like an overly tidy narrative, a sort of Hollywood ending, with James I think I had a lot of success. Admittedly, much of this success or failure was dependent upon the interpersonal training the students had undergone—an important issue beyond the focus of this paper—and on the students themselves, who were in many ways exceptional. When engaged, they were enthusiastic and interested in ways we, as teachers, often wish all students would be. However, helping such students channel that energy is a delicate and difficult task, one that involves not just the student and the teacher but the entire class (Brueggemann et al. 2001).

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Both students disclosed to me that they had AS. Although I had also been presented with a letter from our office of Disabled Student Services, in each case, all that the letter told me was that these students needed extended time on exams and the ability to use a computer. I think this is an important point because I would not have had a clear diagnosis for these students had they not told me, and I will discuss later how this diagnosis raises some difficult issues for incorporating students with AS into the classroom later. A second point is that most resources established to help teachers who have students with AS are directed toward primary- and secondary-school teachers working with individual students, or toward those students’ parents (Williams 1995). Teachers at the college level lack resources, particularly resources that address integrating students in the college classroom. By comparing narratives of my experiences with both of these students, I have developed some fruitful questions about integrating students with AS into writing and literature classes. I hope these narratives and questions can serve as a resource for other collegelevel writing teachers in what is an open and exciting field of inquiry.

Mary Prior to knowing Mary, as I mentioned, I had never heard of AS, though I had heard of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and autism. Mary handed me a letter from Student Services, so I knew she had some unspecified learning disability, the standard accommodation for which was giving the student time and a half for exams. Thus, I was completely unaware of the particular needs of students with AS, and even when Mary told me her diagnosis, it meant little to me. At the start, she seemed above average, if perhaps a bit socially awkward, but these signs did not prepare me for the effect her participation would have upon the class as a whole. Mary began as one of those ideal students who always have a book in hand to read during the spare moments before and after class. In class discussions, at least initially, Mary was a dream. She always had something to say, usually something smart and out of the ordinary, something other students hadn’t perhaps considered or were afraid to say. Thus, she raised the level of complexity and insight in the class. In addition to having many sophisticated ideas, Mary was much more traditionally literate than many of her classmates. For example, during one discussion of social class, she alluded to Jane Austen novels and

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the British television series Keeping Up Appearances. She was a student who not only read nineteenth-century novels but also watched public television—for pleasure. However, her enthusiasm began to make other students bristle. As we all have experienced, college students can often seem dismissive of “nerds” who seem to enjoy being in the classroom, and when this social effect is compounded with the atypical social skills often associated with AS, its stigma is intensified. Students seemed to go beyond mere annoyance, expressed in the occasional rolling of their eyes and snickering, to outright animosity. Class discussions soon became rather combative, partly because Mary didn’t soften her responses—she called things as she saw them, no matter how brutal—partly because Mary gave signals that were interpreted as a failure to listen—for example, her responses to her classmates’ comments often failed to address or validate what they had just said—but mostly because many of the other students appeared to resent her enthusiasm and the energy she drew from the class. In addition to the combativeness, and perhaps worse, other students often felt silenced. Although I tried to maintain my role as mediator and restated, often to the boredom of other students, rules for classroom etiquette, Mary’s passion often broke free, frustrating my efforts at mediation. Such efforts also created an imbalance in the classroom as much of my attention went to one student. Sharp and perceptive, Mary sometimes used this “outsider” status as a sort of authority that created a distance between her and other students. For instance, her knowledge of British literature and European culture enabled her to make references that few, if any, of the others students understood, such as the discussions of the intricacies of social class in Austen novels mentioned above. Group work, an essential part of my pedagogy, became, as you can imagine, very difficult. Yet, for better or worse, I didn’t feel comfortable cutting back on group work to accommodate only one student in the class. One instance was particularly telling. As I had paused to work with one group, I heard Mary’s voice—angry, offended, and accusatory—rising over the class. She was yelling at one of the members of her group, while another student, Katherine, attempted to calm her, telling her “he didn’t mean it the way he said it.” Apparently, a student in Mary’s group had called a situation, not a person, “retarded.” Mary was justifiably and understandably offended by this comment, but her

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reaction was so boisterous and angry that it distracted the entire class and derailed the project. Mary didn’t complete my class that semester. Her initial focus and discipline soon faded; it was an 8am class—a challenge for many students—and Mary started having lots of trouble with her alarm clock. Initially she would wait and apologize to me after class, but increasingly she would disrupt the entire class with her apologies, bursting in and saying sorry as she took a seat. She also started not handing in work. While her increasing absences mitigated the pedagogical challenges she had presented, this was not the way I had hoped to resolve these issues. Due to her absences and late papers, I finally had to ask Mary to leave the course. I had given her numerous warnings, to which she would respond ruefully, saying her parents had told this was her last chance: Apparently, this was her third attempt to pass composition. Her reaction to her final dismissal was dramatic. She sobbed loudly, gulping air. Other instructors left their classes and came to mine to see what had happened. When she finally collected her things and left, we could hear her crying through the elevator door. Although so much of Mary’s negative experience in my class was beyond my control, I still think that there must have been ways of improving that experience, both for Mary and for the other students. Many other students dropped the course, and while it was neither possible nor productive to positively determine the causes of the attrition, my instincts as a teacher told me that the dynamics involving Mary had impacted the course negatively.

James In contrast to Mary, James never missed a class, nor an assignment. Like Mary, he was also “un-coolly” enthusiastic and never missed a chance to answer a question. He, too, handed me a note; this one instructed me to allow him not only time and a half on exams but also the opportunity to take the exam elsewhere. Also like Mary, he behaved in ways that could give the impression that he wasn’t open to others’ ideas. Every time I asked the class a question—which happened frequently, as this is a major feature of my pedagogy—James’s hand shot up into the air. I had to constantly peer over his hand, scanning the room to encourage some other student to answer the question. This was okay when another student also had his or her hand up,

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but when no one did, it was quite awkward. I tried to call on James no more than a couple of times each class. After class, I often explained to him apologetically, though firmly, that there were many other students in the course, and I was trying to teach all of them. Eventually, I established a rule that I wouldn’t call on anyone more than three times in one class. He seemed to understand, but he continued to raise his hand. He sat, of course, dead center, front row; he was his own little island in a small sea of empty seats. No other students would sit near him. Perhaps, in addition to his trigger-happy hand-raising, they also found his constant motion distracting—his leg bounced repeatedly, like a ticking clock, and his note taking was furious and dramatic, with pages, pens, and hands flying. What was most difficult with James, however, was watching the other students’ reactions to him. He could not see them, but I could—the rolling of the eyes, the outright laughter at some things he said. Worse were the few occasions when my own patience with him would wear thin and I would give him a curt answer. For example, during a reading of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1988), James insisted that the character Rutherford Selig was not white, demanding that I show him where the evidence was for that because he had read it three times and had not seen any. I said “Right there on the page where it says he’s white.” And the rest of the students giggled. In many ways, he was only doing exactly what I was asking all of them to do, back things up with specific evidence. However, his tone and his insistence that I was wrong were derailing the discussion, and I lost my patience. I felt for a moment that I had sided with the class against him, which was not the atmosphere I wanted to create. James was aware at times of the effects of his actions in the classroom. He would apologize to me for talking too much, but he didn’t seem to be able to completely stop himself from doing so. However, he would discipline himself for other perceived failures. He would occasionally hit himself for missing the answer to a question, which, naturally, only distracted the class further. In spite of these challenges, James continued with the class with much less frustration than Mary. Upon reflection, I believe a few key differences helped ease James’s participation in class. For one, his own social training and self-discipline appeared more effective in general. Second, setting simple rules, such as the cap on the number of times I would call on him or any student, helped set parameters that applied

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to everyone. Further, the course in which I instructed James was a literature and composition class, rather than a composition class, so perhaps the material was easier work with, although a number of scholars have argued that people with AS have trouble with figurative language: “High-function children with autism exhibit difficulty with metaphor, which requires awareness of mental states because the propositional form of a metaphoric utterance is a loose interpretation of the speaker’s thoughts” (Dennis et al. 2001. Also see Happé 1993). However, the biggest difference, I think, was that I was able, at least a few times, to harness his enthusiasm. For example, when he read aloud, his reading was so passionate that it put other students to shame. I remember one student in particular who sat in the back row and whom I once saw paying bills during class discussion. After James had read, admittedly perhaps melodramatically, I asked her to read the next passage. She started off in her usual flat, drab tone, but she soon added a little more inflexion. I think even she noticed how foolish her own boredom looked compared to James’s excitement. The tables were turned, if only a little, because the students who read with no care for the language were the ones, for once, who came across as awkward and silly. James’s passion set a higher standard for the course. The most successful venture at incorporating James with the rest of the students was acting out a scene from Othello. He was Cassio, and the students were able to laugh in seemingly genuine amusement at a scene done with abandon, and led by James. His delivery was metrically exaggerated, but his performance of a minor character stole the show. It was the scene where Iago hides while he has Rodrigo stab Cassio, though Rodrigo doesn’t do so effectively, so Iago has to finish the job. Our Cassio fell to the floor, grabbing his wounded leg and moaning histrionically. He was appropriately the center of attention, but his command performance also appeared to encourage everyone else to perform more sincerely and enthusiastically. These moments did not succeed in completely diffusing the tension in the class, and it reached a point where I felt I needed to say something to everyone. During a mid-term, then, when James was away taking his proctored exam, I seized my chance, and I’m still not sure whether it was the right thing to do. Before I passed out the texts, I said to the class that we all needed to treat each other with respect, which meant no eye-rolling and no laughing at other students, that interest and passion were not things to be embarrassed about. I didn’t

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name names, but everyone knew I was talking about James. On one level, my comments confirmed for the class that I was aware of the drain he created for the rest of them. But on another, they served to single him out, and that felt like a violation of my own standards of conduct. Did my rhetorical intervention help in the long run? It is impossible to determine such a thing empirically, but I did observe that for a while there was less snickering. And I recently asked another student, Katherine, the student who had earlier helped calm Mary and who was also in James’s class, about her reaction to the speech. She said that she remembered that speech and she thought it was helpful, that she had felt ashamed of herself for her behavior and that she thought it made other students more aware and more respectful. James finished the class well, turning everything in on time or early, exceeding page limits, and most importantly, remaining and perhaps even becoming a little more excited about literature. I have to admit, I was relieved to see him go, as I would have been relieved to finish a tough workout—tired, but better for the exertion.

Differences and questions Mary and James were two very different students in many ways, failing and succeeding largely on their own merits. While I am certainly interested in how we teachers can help such students to more success, I am equally interested in the dynamics of the composition class as a whole, inclusive of students with AS. While Mary and James were different, their similar social intensity created a similar tension in the classroom, a tension that could drain time and energy from the class if not handled well. What I am hoping to find are ways of channeling some of these students’ energy back into the classroom, to make it more productive. So many students could benefit from experiencing and sharing one-eighth of James’s and Mary’s enthusiasm. So far, I have found little assistance toward these goals in the literature on disability and writing. The research I’ve encountered does not address the English and literature teacher, for whom figurative language, complexity, and emotional understanding are essential features of the class and material—and crucial challenges for students like James and Mary. Most frustrating for me has been the lack of real advice I received from our student services department. Extra time on exams did not address James’s and Mary’s real challenges in my courses. These

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silences in the literature and in administration have raised for me a series of questions—questions that I hope may serve to guide future inquiry by teachers and researchers committed to improving the educational experience of students with AS and other Autism Spectrum Disorders. These are as follows: How do privacy and disclosure interact in the experience of AS students in college classrooms? What special challenges and opportunities do the intense social dynamics of literature and writing classrooms present for students with AS, their classmates, and their teachers? While these questions must remain open, I can reflect on them briefly through the lens of the narratives I recounted above. First, my experiences taught me that while it is important that students have their right to privacy, it is equally important for teachers to have some specific and relevant knowledge of students’ needs. For this paper, I interviewed our coordinator of student services, hoping to get some clearer answers about disclosure and privacy. Regarding privacy, he indicated that it was the student’s right to decide whether to disclose a diagnosis, and that he encouraged students to do so. However, he did not address whether the letters teachers receive could be more specific. He did say that once we received a letter, we were welcome to come to his office and find out more about the student, even to the extent of looking at the student’s files. As I reflected on this solution, it seemed to lead to another major problem: having to take significant time on top of my teaching load (I taught at that time five overloaded sections of composition [25 students each] and literature [28 students each]) to research a student’s particular disability file and then to plan a tailored accommodation strategy clearly transgressed the boundaries of “reasonable” accommodation. On this core issue the coordinator and I agreed, though we didn’t come up with any answers about how to balance the needs of students such as James and Mary with the needs of the other students in the class. This conundrum may be a disproportionately larger problem at open-admissions schools, such as the one I taught at. Based on my experiences with both Mary and James, I can conclude that the class as a whole must work together, and if need be, address these issues explicitly. Some ways to effect this cooperation, as suggested by others in this collection, are greater clarity in course syllabi and assignments. These accommodations help students with ASD while benefiting the whole class. Also, as demonstrated in James’s narratives,

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the challenges inherent in the writing or literature class for students with AS—group work, emotional modeling, anticipating audience concerns, etc.—can be transformed in part by identifying the motivating aspects of these experiences for the students (such as James’s penchant for dramatic performance) and providing pedagogical room for the student and everyone else in the class to explore them. This technique points to a theoretical shift in classroom practice that I think we need to attend to as we seek to serve not only our students with AS but all of our students. Increasing the “visibility” of is a key step in integrating students with a documented disability into the classroom (Brueggemann 2001). Both James and Mary were in a sense “visible” because they self-disclosed their diagnosis. However, I handled this visibility differently in each class. For Mary, my attempts to minimize the distance her self-disclosure created by choosing not to address it served to further isolate her. Her claim to AS was often a bid to mark her difference, and my silences sometimes served to undercut those bids. For example, in the story I recounted about her reaction to the word “retarded,” I could have taken that opportunity to discuss that word, regardless about whether it sent the class on a tangent. Not only might that have diffused the situation, it might have helped the class draw on Mary’s experience in a way that showed we could learn from it and thus include rather than stigmatize her. In other words, I could have used this disruption as an opportunity, as. suggest: We believe that even as our own limitations disrupt certain portions of our lives, like Foucauldian “ruptures” and Kuhnian “revolutions,” these disruptions provide rich veins to work and grist for our mills. These disruptions bring us—as they do other teachers—opportunities to enrich learning for those in our classrooms. We see differences in abilities (not in disabilities)—like other differences of gender, ethnic backgrounds, and class—as generative in their place within writing classrooms. Brueggemann et al. 2001, 392).

While I realize there may be risks inherent in these strategies of teachers prejudging students, it is also necessary for teachers to be prepared and have some understanding of AS before students with that diagnosis arrive in their classrooms. The difference needs to be made visible. Contrast my experience with Mary with my following experience with James: By the time James arrived in my class, I was at least familiar with AS. Thus, I was able to anticipate and redirect some of James’s

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abilities, to channel his enthusiasm in a way that I think helped not only James but also the class as a whole.

References Akroyd, Dan. 2004. Still Full of the Blues. Fresh Air with Terry Gross. NPR. Brueggemann, Brenda Jo, Linda Feldmeier White, Patricia A. Dunn, Barbara A. Heifferon, and Johnson Cheu. 2001. Becoming visible: lessons in disability. CCC 52.3: 368-398. Dennis, Maureen, Anne L. Lazenby, and Linda Lockyer. 2001. Inferential language in high-function children with autism, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. 31.1: 47-54. Happé, Francesca. G. E. 1993. Communicative competence and theory of mind: A test of relevance theory. Cognition 482: 101–119. Shakespeare, William. 1987. Othello. c. 1604. London: Methuen. “What is AS?” The National Autistic Society’s Website. http://www.nas.org. uk/nas/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=212. Williams, Karen. 1995. Understanding the student with Asperger’s Syndrome: Guidelines for teachers. Focus on Autistic Behavior 10.2. Wilson, August. 1988. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. New York: Plume.

6 Reaching the College Composition Student with Autism through the Cartoon-Enhanced Classroom

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eople with autism tend to be visual rather than verbal thinkers (Grandin 2002), which is one of the reasons why they often have difficulty in writing classes such as the Freshman English required by most two- and fouryear colleges. The autistic student’s language skills may be more readily developed by approaching the act of writing via the use of imagery. Temple Grandin, an Assistant Professor at Colorado State University, who also happens to be autistic, has said, “Pictures are my first language, and words are my second language” (2002). Educators, recognizing this connection, have used art to reach students with autism in other subjects; I’ve found that cartoons in particular can be a particularly effective teaching tool for reaching and connecting with Basic Writing and Freshman English students with autism. Since people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) often relate readily to the visual, it seems likely that they would be more comfortable approaching the daunting task of writing by way of the less intimidating medium of cartoons. Additionally, cartoons in the classroom aid autistic students with social interaction. The use of humor encourages the typically withdrawn autistic student to become more engaged with the instructor and other students, which also ensures better engagement with assignments. Why specifically cartoons? Their inherent lightheartedness helps to eliminate the anxiety/writer’s block/tendency-to-give-upand-withdraw that many students, including autistic and basic writing students, get in the composition classroom. The comedic aura of

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the cartoon-enhanced classroom, as well as the cartoons themselves, can turn usage blunders and malapropisms into comic scenes rather than humiliating episodes. This encourages the autistic student, and other students as well, to engage rather than withdraw. Students work on their writing in the classroom, and become willing to share it with others by reading it aloud or allowing the instructor to project it on the overhead screen for class discussion. I generally have my students send some of their assignments to me by way of Blackboard. I ask for volunteers to allow me to project their work on the front screen for class discussion. Understandably, many students are reluctant to volunteer. Interestingly, I have found that when class assignments are coupled with cartoons, it breaks the ice of the uptight academic atmosphere, encouraging students to volunteer. Initially, this takes a little prodding on my part, but since I handle initial critiques in a very soft touch lighthearted manner, students become less apprehensive about having their work reviewed. I focus on the positive aspects of their work, offering constructive criticism in a very limited tactful manner. My final reason for recommending cartoons in the classroom can be explained by another quote from Temple Grandin: “Many children with autism are good at drawing [and other art forms]”(2001). That is certainly another benefit of using cartoons, not only as illustrative examples, but as student art projects leading to or combined with writing assignments. Because people with autism often have difficulties with fine and gross motor skills such as the handling of a pen, causing them to have unacceptable handwriting, some educators may fear that asking them to complete art projects such as cartoons could cause even more distress in the classroom. I argue that 1) many cartoon styles, such as the classic Thurber cartoons in vintage New Yorkers, use minimalist, simple, and sometimes even seemingly jagged lines. One does not need the skill of Michelangelo to produce an acceptable or even as in Thurber’s case—brilliant—cartoon; 2) many artists (myself included) have difficulty producing attractive handwriting, and yet can draw pictorially interesting cartoons. Perhaps it’s a left brain right brain phenomenon where handwriting requires some type of skill unnecessary for producing comic drawings. Maybe it’s a similar phenomenon which can make learning to write a more doable task when approached via cartooning.

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Autistic students in the basic writing (BW) classroom Basic Writing students are a challenging population to teach, and with the anticipated upcoming influx of autistic students added to this group, college composition instructors need to equip themselves with effective pedagogies. It’s important to note that students with autism don’t automatically get assigned to Basic Writing classes. High functioning autistic students, such as those with Asperger’s Syndrome, may test into Freshman English or Honors English. However, if students with ASD present atypical social and writing behaviors, Basic Writing is often the only institutional solution for providing more one-on-one instruction and accommodation. Autistic students can add additional challenges to any composition classroom, as has already been discussed by other authors in this collection. The fact that their anxiety regarding essay writing often masquerades as a type of defiance (Church, et al. 2000, 12-20), is really not so different from some other BW students, including those with learning disabilities (LD) (Graham, Harris, and Larsen 2001, 74-84). Writing can be a frustrating and even frightening endeavor for anyone, including professional writers struggling with writer’s block, so those of us who are professionals can only imagine the psychic pain of the Basic Writing student with autism. Basic Writing students, particularly those with autism, may not possess a strong interest in doing well in a class. Autistic students are not necessarily motivated by the standard motivators society has somehow managed to dictate for the rest of us. They may have narrowly and intensely focused interests. Their innocence of social mores is refreshing. Less refreshing, and more frustrating, for the instructor of this interesting group, are their alternative communication styles, which may impair academic performance—particularly group work and oral presentations, but also writing that requires an appreciation of what the audience might want to know or might be feeling. Instead of looking at these challenges as “differences” to be repressed or eliminated, why not harness them to break writing pedagogy out of its rut and to present alternative activities that will engage all writing students? A cartoon-centered pedagogy can be an excellent response to needs for atypical motivation, material tailored to student interests, and visual learning.

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How cartoons became a new approach— for me—and my students My 20+ years of teaching Basic Writing (BW) and Freshman English have taught me two essential ingredients for maintaining a constructive learning environment in the classroom: 1) make the act of learning interesting to the students, and 2) give the students plenty of positive reinforcement. I’m speaking of all my students, including, of course, my students with autism. I don’t mean passing out Girl Scout cookies to those who are punctual and participatory; I mean showering students with compliments when they engage in appropriate classroom behaviors such as freewriting and brainstorming for preliminary drafts. I also mean allowing fun work such as group critiques to follow successfully completed difficult work such as revising rough drafts. Early in my teaching career, when I endured the unpleasant experience of attempting to teach unruly classes, I felt the problem was caused not by my teaching per se, but by the fact that I was teaching an unpopular required course. Freshman English seemed to have a negative reputation on campus: essay writing was seen as dull and difficult. Eventually, I began to notice a pattern: on those occasions when I managed to interest and engage the class with my pedagogy, they were attentive and eager to write, or if not eager, at least willing. On those graced days there were virtually no discipline issues in my classroom. It dawned on me that boredom was the breeding ground of class disruption. I decided that to avoid boring the students, I had to keep them spellbound with a breathtaking performance. My next revelation was that I did not need to be an Oscar performer; I could turn the action over to my students, encouraging them be active participants rather than passive spectators. My pedagogy did a complete about-face: from professor-centered to student-centered. Wait! Do I hear the distant cries of instructors insisting that even “student-centered” isn’t enough to engage the truly disinterested? Keep reading, and I’ll tell you how cartoons came to the rescue.... “Student centered” does not mean that my students suddenly metamorphosed into charmed participants, while I sat back relaxing in a lawn chair, chugging V8s while they did all the work. On the contrary, my workload outside the classroom increased because I was now on a mission for materials and techniques to keep my students engaged in the act of learning, ways to keep their learning environment fun and

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fascinating. This was a challenge because most of my Basic Writers, and many of my Freshman English students as well, would show up the first day of class with very negative biases regarding essay writing, English classes in general, and yes, English teachers most of all. Were their attitudes that obvious? Not usually, and I’m not a mind reader. I would acquire this hot information from their first day writing samples, which would consist of a few paragraphs discussing their experiences in English classes. What a dilemma! How does one make a class interesting when the subject is of little interest to the students? Humor, I’ve found, is the magic ingredient—and what better way to include humor than to revolve the class around cartoons? This can be especially helpful for students with ASD, and other visually-oriented students. Cartoons magically transform a classroom. Like rabbits jumping from a hat, the humor and novelty alone would get anyone’s attention; the challenge for the instructor is to direct the energy of the hilarity into the students’ writing. It’s exactly that energy that makes the cartoon-enhanced classroom a delightful switch from the low energy and apathy apparent in many college classrooms. Cartoons work well with many students, including those with autism. The more anxietyprone the student—I’m speaking of the anxiety of writer’s block or some other form of a fear of writing, such as the low self-esteem seemingly fostered by a lack of skill—and possibly even your garden-variety existential angst—the more that student needs some comic relief to calm down enough to write. Isn’t it ironic that autistic is one letter off artistic? It’s ironic because autistic students are often artistic students. The autistic student’s unique perspective, along with his or her visual orientation, lends itself to a creative artistic approach. Haven’t all great artists had a unique perspective? (see fig. 1, next page)

Some of the ways cartoons can be used in the BW classroom Cartoons and cartoonists can be used a variety of ways in the Basic Writing classroom. The instructor who wishes to keep the act of drawing out of the writing classroom may choose to have students simply use work by cartoonists to illustrate their essays. A student writing a persuasive essay arguing against driving SUVs could type

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Fig. 1. Learning appropriate pedagogy for teaching students with autism can help an instructor maintain inner serenity. Drawing by Val Gerstle.

“SUV cartoons” into an internet search engine (Google Images is a good place to start), and come up with hundreds of funny cartoons poking fun at gas-guzzling SUVs and their drivers. Another possibility is having students write analytical essays about a cartoon or group of cartoons. This works particularly well with complex cartoons such as editorial or political cartoons. A similar but more involved assignment would be to have students write an analytical

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“comparison and contrast” essay comparing the work of two different cartoonists. They could discuss the artists’ philosophies, handling of subject matter, and drawing techniques. (E.g., Artist X uses India ink with a quill pen and watercolor brush to create interesting lines that vary in strength, depth, width, and intensity. He relies on crosshatching and stippling for most of his shading, creating rich textural effects that appear rough and grainy. He creates drama by juxtaposing black silhouettes of people, trees, and buildings against large white negative space backgrounds. Artist Y has a looser style developed with brush strokes of varying thicknesses and watered down India ink to create sensuous layers of light-to-medium gray painterly ink washes combined with ink drawn details (eyes, noses, and mouths, for example) using a black Bic pen or a fine-tip artist’s pen. Students could also write persuasive essays about political issues and use political cartoons as part of the argument’s support (including cartoons that work as counterarguments). In terms of autistic students, these choices may work better with a high-functioning group, such as those with Asperger’s. Because ASD students tend to be visually oriented, the ideal approach would be to encourage students to produce the cartoons themselves. The instructor would begin the activity by using cartoons from the internet projected onto an overhead classroom screen, as a way to introduce a variety of artists’ techniques and concepts. The instructor will also explain how drawing cartoons offers insights into a particular assignment the students are about to attempt. For example, I use the following demonstration and exercise to teach students to be more specific in their writing by using words with appropriate connotations. First I project, on an overhead screen, one at a time, a sentence using a synonym for walk (waddle, sashey, strut, etc.), accompanied by an amusing illustration or cartoon. (See fig. 2, next page I feel that the cartoons help clarify for students the meaning of the synonyms. One of the lists I’ve created follows after the explanatory definitions, which I post on Blackboard or pass around the classroom as a preliminary handout: connotation--noun. Idea or notion suggested by or associated with a word, phrase, etc. in addition to its explicit meaning, or denotation. E.g., weird, strange, eccentric, bizarre, odd, peculiar, unique, and unusual are synonyms but have different connotations.

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Fig. 2: Heather marched past, eager to finish her morning “walk.” Drawing by Val Gerstle.

connote—verb. To suggest or convey (associations, etc.) in addition to the explicit, or denoted, meaning. E.g., the word mother means female parent, but it generally connotes love, care, tenderness, etc. However, if you don’t get along with your mother, for you the word may connote something more along the lines of Joan Crawford’s Mommy Dearest. In your writing, aim for universal, rather than personal, connotations.

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Fig. 3: The parade was over, and Jonathon strolled home. Drawing by Val Gerstle.

denotation—noun. The direct, explicit meaning or reference of a word or term, the dictionary definition. denote—verb. To signify or refer to explicitly; stand for; mean. ü Judy walked into the room. ü Skeeter sashayed into the room. ü Rusty staggered into the room. ü Bubba strutted into the room. ü William ambled into the room. ü Tonya tiptoed into the room. ü Katrina crept into the room.

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Fig. 4: Jason raced to the finish line. Drawing by Val Gerstle.

I have students complete their own groups of synonym sentences, along with accompanying funny illustrations or cartoons. I let them change the names, as I did, just for fun, but the real focus is on generating synonyms and using them in sentences that make sense. I allow them to use the thesaurus tool of an internet dictionary, such as thesaurus.com, or they can use Word’s synonym function available when you right-click on a word. I like to have them do this in groups, with each student producing three to five synonym-sentences-with-illustrations. Then, the real test: I ask them to write a paragraph for each sentence, using it in an appropriate context. Another version which has occurred to me, but which I haven’t tried, would be to make use of one or more of their synonyms in their next essay.

COMING UP: A CRASH COURSE IN CARTOONING! For starters, suggest to your students the possibility of drawing animated animals, animals that look and act like people. They’re easier

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Fig. 5: Going nowhere fast. What synonym of run best describes this runner’s gait? Drawing by Val Gerstle.

to draw than people who look and act like people. Also, they’re inherently comical, so it’s less work to make them cartoons, or amusing illustrations. Tell your students to start with basic shapes, and to sketch them in lightly with pencil so faulty lines can be continually erased until placement of each line is, if not perfect, at least acceptable. When the pencil .

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drawing is complete, have students ink over it with a small brush and India ink, or a pen, or a Crayola Marker. Be sure and have plenty of paper towels handy for easy cleanups. If students find those smells offensive—especially if the classroom ventilation isn’t the best—a black Prismacolor pencil or a black wax crayon or a conte crayon may be used. It’s ideal for the instructor to bring a variety of art supplies to the class for students to experiment with, and then have the students buy/ bring their own. It may be easiest for the instructor to simply supply the supplies, and have the students pay a supply fee. There could be a field trip to an art supply store, or the instructor could get on the website of an art supply store and project pictures of supplies on the classroom computer’s overhead screen. It would be ideal if this were a local store, so the students could then go in person on their own time, to purchase the supplies. This would obviously be better than ordering online and having to wait for the supplies to arrive. Best of all, if the campus bookstore has an art section (most do), the “field trip” could simply be there. The instructor could order the supplies ahead of time, to be held at the campus bookstore, for the students

Fig. 6: Teaching students to draw a frog is an easy way to introduce art to autistic students. Drawing by Val Gerstle.

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to purchase, which may be the simplest solution, since they should already be comfortable with going there to purchase textbooks. Now you may be thinking, drawing a cartoon isn’t so easy, if you’re not an artist. Most people actually find that a simple cartoon is easy to do. If you can draw a basic shape, you can draw a cartoon. For example, if you can draw a heart shape, you can draw a frog. Simply make that heart slightly squat, and a tad spread-eagled (so to speak); add a semicircle for a head, kind of like a setting sun between two mountains; then slap a couple of eyeballs on top and a couple of flapper feet underneath, and voila!—you have a frog! Can you draw an oval? So, it’s a bit wobbly—your hand isn’t too steady, thanks to that Starbucks you had to make it through that 8:00 a.m. class—but that’s okay, so all you need is another oval—a smaller one that could pass for an eye (don’t forget a couple of itty-bitty circles for the iris and pupil), and voila! (again)—you have a fish! Need a tail? No problem, if you can manage a triangular fin-like shape. (See fig. 7, next page) How easy it was to draw that frog and that fish! Certainly easier than catching them or cooking them! So you see? Creating cartoons, or humorous illustrations, can be as simple as scribbling and doodling, and incredibly appealing to the very visual autistic student, providing an imagistic avenue into the intimidating world of words. Of course, drawing a fish and teaching writing using a drawing of a fish are two different activities, so what follows are some practical suggestions for making such a pedagogy work.

The logistics of the carto0n-enhanced student-centered classroom All students, including those with ASD, should be allowed an assortment of activities in any given class period, particularly if it’s one of the three-hour evening classes I frequently teach. I break activities up into 15-20-minute chunks. I first started doing this with Basic Writing, which is notorious for having students with attention-span issues, but I now do it with all of my classes. The popular notion seems to be that the short attention span group consists of students with learning difficulties or developmental disorders, but in this increasingly technological age, I believe a short attention span is becoming the norm rather than the exception.

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Fig. 7: Here fishy, fishy.... If the fish could talk, what would he say? Drawing by Val Gerstle.

I remain flexible and open to changes in scheduled activities to accommodate each student’s individual needs. “Some students with ASD do not care if an activity ends before they have completed the task, while others do not want to stop until they have finished the entire assignment” (Heflin and Alaimo 2007, 123). Some students race

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Fig. 8: Sometimes sitting too close to a window can make it difficult for the student with autism to focus on the task at hand. Drawing by Val Gerstle.

through assignments rather quickly, while others need extra time. I feel it would be bad practice to make time slots ironclad. Having tutors in the classroom helps me to maintain the flexibility of allowing some students extra time and assistance, when needed. “Judicious use of time dictates that activities should end on a successful note, meaning that some students may return to individual work while others stay to complete a group activity. Similarly, some students will need

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additional time to complete an activity and transition after the others” (Heflin and Alaimo 2007, 123). “Variety is the spice of life” may be a cliché, but it’s a helpful philosophy to incorporate into one’s pedagogy to ensure keeping students awake and interested. Actually, keeping students awake is no longer a problem since I began teaching in electronic classrooms and computer labs. The classroom demons I wrestle with now are text-messaging, MP3s and iPods, My Space, Facebook, YouTube videos, online football games, etc. To deter these, I’ve found it’s best to establish reasonable rules and guidelines during the first class. However, students still need occasional reminders like “Could you please get off Spacebook?” Since I encourage students to do internet research for their essays and cartoons, it’s tempting for them to slide over to football games and Facebook. This ties in with the attention span issue. Again, the remedy serves all students, including those with autism: I keep the tempo of the class fast-paced and interesting by keeping class activities not only frequently changing, as mentioned above, but also varied. A threehour night class may consist of some (but not all!) of the following: explanation of the evening’s assignments (including a demo or demonstration); reading and analyzing essay examples from our text or handouts or the internet; analyzing cartoons from handouts or the internet or examples I scan and copy into Blackboard; researching cartoons; drawing cartoons; group brainstorming on the overhead for essay topics; brainstorming on the overhead for ideas for developing essay topics; freewriting; pre-rough-draft writing; additional brief lecture and demo; small groups discussion; online library research for developing essays; peer critiques; individual critiques; and students sending me their work on Blackboard—which I often critique on the overhead screen. Keeping students engaged for a three-hour evening class, when many are tired, is more challenging than a 50-minute day class. If you can learn from my three-hour evening example, your 50-minute day classes should be easier. One factor to keep in mind when planning art projects for a writing class—particularly for a longer class—is controlling for overstimulation. The autistic student’s heightened response to certain sensory stimulation has the potential to make him or her upset—e.g., becoming agitated by a strong smell or offensive sound. Interestingly, some autistic people experience a hypo- rather than hyper-sensitivity to sensory stimuli such as sounds and smells and touch/pain thresholds.

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Fig. 9: Creative Thinking Exercise (for autistic and other students). What should the blank sign say? Imagine what the sign could say. Also imagine what visual elements could be added or deleted to make the illustration make more sense. Drawing by Val Gerstle.

This sensitivity or insensitivity seems to be situation specific. For example, a student may love playing a DVD at a loud volume, but when subjected to someone else playing the same DVD at the same volume, he may become highly agitated. An instructor who is aware of these possible sensitivities in students with autism can make the classroom a more pleasant place by keeping noise levels in the classroom reasonably low, and eliminating other sensory stimuli such as strong smells that may be perceived as unpleasant. Some windowless computer classrooms or classrooms with windows that don’t open may be so poorly ventilated that any smell—even food—could be annoying. I once had a student who had a personal pan pizza delivered to herself at our 6:30 p.m. class, which was in a windowless computer classroom. This caused other students, autistic or possibly just hungry, to become agitated. The same student, on a different night, started painting her nails in class. The fumes were overwhelming almost instantly. I quickly put a halt to the activity, but it took several minutes for the smell to dissipate.

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Since a heightened sensitivity to certain smells and sounds is a hallmark of autism, it becomes imperative to have art classes held in wellventilated rooms. The use of art supplies can indeed by quite odorous. Since I’m advocating using cartoons to teach Basic Writing, I believe it’s critical—unless the art supplies are limited to odorless pencils—to conduct these classes in rooms with proper ventilation. Some autistic students may have an aversion to the smell of Magic Markers or India ink, while others may dislike the sound of chalk on a blackboard. I’ve found that non-permanent India ink and non-waterproof markers (e.g., Crayola brand) are not as potent as indelible varieties. A particularly offensive smell is that emitted by the dry-erase markers used on the whiteboards that seem to be replacing blackboards in many college classrooms. It may not be possible to remove whiteboards from classrooms, but instructors can avoid using them. The instructor should alter the learning environment to accommodate the sensitivities of autistic students, even if it means moving the class to a different room. This includes being flexible about what medium autistic students elect to use. You could let students experiment until they find the medium that suits their artistic and sensory needs. I recommend using an odorless medium such as Prismacolor pencils. These waxy pencils come in an incredible range of colors and are delightful to draw and shade with. Other odorless mediums include watercolor pencils that can be used along with a cup of water and a brush to create the look of a watercolor painting, and fine-tipped water-based “art pens”—much better than fumy indelible markers. When computers with appropriate software are available, the instructor could have students draw their cartoons using Illustrator or Photoshop or free online programs such as Gimp or Bitstrips. Then of course there’s the inexpensive, easy-to-use, odorless (unless you stick it right next to your nose), oldfashioned #2 pencil. Many students like doing “rough draft sketches” with pencil because mistakes can be erased; then completing the finished artwork with another medium such as markers—or scanning the sketch into Photoshop where it can be made to look like most anything—watercolor, airbrush, acrylic.... I will close this list of suggestions with my personal favorite—an extremely inexpensive and easy-to-use tool, a tool that, ironically, is my favorite drawing and writing tool: a black Bic pen. It’s a pretty cool way to work on essays and cartoons simultaneously, which is especially helpful if you happen to be teaching in a room with no computers. Students in large “lecture”

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Fig. 10: What’ll it be—frog legs for a night—or a buddy for life? Drawing by Val Gerstle.

classes do something akin to this when they take notes and scribble doodles with Bic pens in their notebooks. My Bic pen drawing below began as an attempt to draw a frog, but quickly turned into a relaxing adventure in doodling as I absentmindedly scribbled away, creating what appears to be a rather hairy-looking creature. Some practical notes on selecting cartoons to facilitate writing exercises for students with ASD: Any cartoon could be appropriate for a high-functioning autistic student such as those with Asperger’s Syndrome, but a low-functioning student may have trouble with editorial and political cartoons, whose nuances may be too sophisticated for these literal-minded individuals. Lighthearted cartoons such as Charles Schulz’s Peanuts or Jim Davis’s Garfield may be more appropriate. The nice thing about these types of cartoons is that they work on several levels, from simple to complex, so they can be understood, in some way, by almost any audience. One person may be amused by the lighthearted antics of Snoopy and Charlie Brown, while someone

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Fig. 11: Sometimes you just need a warm fuzzy friend. Drawing by Val Gerstle.

else may relate to the way these characters express and enact the existential angst of the human condition. Don’t forget humorous magazine illustrations and children’s book illustrations. Some, like Dr. Seuss, can be enjoyed by adults as well as children, so I think they can certainly be used in the classroom.

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My personal favorites are editorial and political cartoons. A Freshman English class of traditional students can revolve around essays written to analyze these cartoons, but some autistic students may need slightly less complex choices. They usually do well with choices like Snoopy and Garfield, but if they find these too childish, there are certainly in-between—in terms of complexity—choices such Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury or Rich Tennant’s The 5th Wave. And don’t be remiss about considering one of the golden oldies, such as Dennis the Menace. Ideally, the writing instructor will introduce her students to a variety of cartoon choices, by flashing examples on the overhead, via a classroom computer on which she conducts an Internet search. The Internet is a great source for locating cartoons for the writing assignments I have suggested. Doing searches for “cartoons” as well as for the actual names of cartoons and cartoonists will bring up a variety of sites, many of which list multiple cartoonists with examples. Many cartoonists have their own websites, where the viewer can click on hundreds of cartoons, and using the zoom tool to enlarge them for better viewing. The work of many newspaper cartoonists can be accessed by simply typing the newspaper’s name or the cartoonist’s name into a search engine such as Google, and following the links. If the instructor simply cannot shoulder the extra burden of seeking these extra-curricular materials, students can do their own Internet searches, inside or outside of class, to select their own cartoonists for inspiration. However, the instructor is wise to keep a close eye on students and guide their choices, because some may have trouble picking artists. Basic Writers, especially autistic students, can become overwhelmed when faced with too many choices. For this reason, the instructor may ultimately decide to limit their choices of cartoons.

Conclusion: Visualizing Equal Access for All Writing Students An instructor obviously needs more than media to motivate the autistic student in the Basic Writing classroom. It is critical to equip oneself with knowledge about autism so as to be able to anticipate the special needs of these students, and keeping those needs in mind when developing pedagogy. An effective instructor is already using a range of pedagogies to engage and motivate students; with autistic students

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one must simply make some adjustments such as making assignments extra clear by breaking instructions down into many steps, and by making everything visual rather than simply verbal. That’s why using a visual medium such as cartoons can make learning how to write an easier task for the autistic student.

Fig. 12: Many students with autism excel in one specific area. Drawing by Val Gerstle.

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It’s important to remember that students with ASD, like other students, cannot be lumped in a one-size-fits-all category. They are individuals with individual needs. However, a general knowledge about people with ASD will help an instructor to better design a course to meet autistic students’ needs, and encourage the instructor to be sensitive to the issues of each autistic student in the room. The instructor will learn, for example, that many autistic people have an extremely narrow range of interests, and so the instructor could allow the autistic person to write essays and draw or select cartoons about topics directly or at least remotely connected to that student’s area or areas of interest. The informed instructor will also know that autistic students have difficulty with communication skills such as making eye contact, using appropriate facial expressions, and engaging in conversations. The instructor may use group activities as well as a lot of one-on-one attention, to draw out students with autism. The instructor will offer autistic students a lot of attention and encouragement. Don’t writing instructors do this already—with all students?

References Church, C., S. Alisanski, and S. Amanullah. 2000. The social, behavioral, and academic experiences of children with Asperger syndrome. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities 15 (2000): 12-20. Graham, Steven, Karen R. Harris, and Lynn Larsen. 2001. Prevention and intervention of writing difficulties for students with learning disabilities. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice 16 (2001): 74-84. Grandin, Temple. 2002. Teaching tips for children and adults with autism. Center for the study of autism. http://www.autism.org/temple/tips.html. Heflin, L. Juane, and Donna Fiorino Alaimo. 2007. Students with autism spectrum disorders. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

7 Helping Autistic Students Improve Written Communication Skills through Visual Images

Muriel Cunningham

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hen I began teaching English classes in a Cincinnati suburban public school, I had no training in teaching composition beyond the writing course required of prospective English teachers offered in the sophomore year of college. At that time, 1969, we were being prepared to teach literature. For composition instruction, we were on our own. Also at that time, students with disabilities (those enrolled in Special Education) were not mainstreamed. Our students were divided into the required English courses according to their future plans—college bound or non-college bound. In this sink-or-swim environment, I found that our English Department Chair considered composition extremely important. Students were expected to write—often, and we were expected to evaluate their writing—every piece. Survival meant giving up evenings, weekends, and holiday vacations to maintain some control over the workload. Of course, I spent time at writing conferences and learned the emerging research on improving student writing. But just as I thought I might have a handle on the situation, Special Education students were mainstreamed. I left public school teaching in the year 2000—before the current influx of students diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) had begun enrolling in any significant numbers. However, for several years, I spent four weeks each summer working with Cincinnati

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Public School teachers enrolled in the Ohio Writing Project sponsored by Miami University. Each year, I heard more and more stories from these public school teachers about the increasing numbers of students with Asperger’s Syndrome. Now I hear of Asperger’s everywhere—my hairdresser’s son has been diagnosed with this type of autism and she fights the bureaucracy to get help for him; MSNBC carries in its programming a special segment about Asperger’s; Robert Kennedy, Jr., had engaged in a fight to help students and their parents find the cause of Asperger’s. The Centers for Disease Control has released a surveillance study estimating that 1 in 110 American children has some form of ASD (Centers for Disease Control 2009). Certainly, some of these students will be enrolling in our college classes, and we will be expected to improve their writing skills. Until recently I have been teaching in the Center for Access and Transition at the University of Cincinnati. Our students have been identified as those who need additional help in writing if they are to successfully navigate their way through the college maze. The instructors in this program are blessed with increased teaching time (six hours per week per class), limited class enrollment (15 maximum), computer labs, and two tutors working with us in the classroom. Even so, many of us haven’t worked extensively with any students who have learning disabilities, and I would guess that few of us are prepared to deal with students specifically diagnosed with Asperger’s. These students may be intellectually gifted and “ … may have difficulty associating meaning with verbal instructions, [but they may also be proficient in the use] of instructions that take a more visual form” (Tissot and Evans 2003, 425). We need to know how these students learn best if we are to help them; we need to learn how to teach these skills to students who don’t respond to the manner in which writing is traditionally taught. Temple Grandin, an Assistant Professor at Colorado State University and also one diagnosed with Asperger’s, says, “Every thought I have is represented by a picture. My thought process goes from specific pictures to general concepts, whereas most people think from general to specific” (Grandin 2007). Grandin acknowledges that not all students with Asperger’s learn better with the aid of visual images, but many do. We need to make use of whatever methods will help these students because it’s our job to teach all students who arrive in our classrooms. Those students diagnosed with Asperger’s will be required to complete writing courses if they are to be granted a degree

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and pursue the career of choice. This is true even though the traditional writing process may not be their forte. Most of us are unprepared to teach students with autism, but these students will soon be arriving in our classes in significant numbers. In preparation for this eventuality, I have attempted to educate myself about methods that may help these students. I have revisited what I had learned years ago from Howard Gardner (“Multiple Intelligences as a Catalyst,” 1995, 16-18) about multiple intelligence, particularly his discussion of visual learners. In addition, I have dug deeply into my past teaching experience for ideas that would be helpful, not just for these students, but for all special needs students, while at the same time not depriving other students of the help they need. We can use these activities to increase the writing proficiency of all students in our classrooms. In other words, everyone can participate, no one is singled out as one with a special need, and all student writing can improve. When I first arrived at Milford High School (in Milford, a suburb of Cincinnati), I was fortunate to work with Roy Ferguson and Jon Shorr, two pioneers in the field of visual literacy. (Twenty-five years later, visual literacy was incorporated into the Ohio state curriculum requirements for all high school students.) In their Visual Communications Project, underwritten by the Milford Exempted Village School District in the early 1970’s, Ferguson and Shorr connected visual imagery to written expression. For example, they showed students a series of photographs of a running child. Some photographs, all of which were taken at different distances from a fixed observer, show the child running toward the observer; others depict the child running away. Students arrange the photographs in such a way as to make the child move closer and then depart in the other direction. Once the arrangements have been made, students discuss the reason for their choices. (Ferguson and Shorr 1972-73, 3)

Upon completion of this activity, the students were asked to write a description of the approach and departure of the running child. In doing so, they discovered 1. That both the image and print descriptions required a certain order (coherence), 2. that the degree of description possible, and even desirable, differs in image and print media,

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3. that each of the media communicates certain kinds of ideas more effectively than the other. Print, for example, often expresses a subject’s inner thoughts more effectively than images, which in turn are able to describe scenes with greater vividness (Ferguson and Shorr 1972-73, 3). The purpose of the visual literacy study was to make students aware of the effect of visuals upon the viewer. We studied film, television, and advertising. The significance here is that our students were being taught to analyze visuals for their effectiveness, and those techniques were specifically transferred to the students’ writing—a technique that may help students with Asperger’s focus and organize their written compositions. Later, Howard Gardner’s work on multiple intelligences forced all of us as educators to look carefully at how individual students learn. Gardner initially described himself as a psychologist who attacked “the standard notion of intelligence as a single capacity, with which an individual is born, and which proves difficult, if not impossible, to alter. In place of this construct, I offered a more pluralistic cognitive universe” (“Multiple Intelligences” 1995, 16). Gardner criticized the educational systems that insisted upon treating all students as though they learned similarly. Instead, he encouraged teachers to create an environment where … in their classrooms, students are treated as individuals, multiple approaches to literature and literary expression are invited, the variety of forms of mental representation are honored, and students have the opportunity to show what they have understood—and not understood—in ways that are comfortable to them.” (“Multiple Intelligences 1995, 17)

As we would expect, the first persons interested in this approach were “educators of young children, and educators of special populations (gifted/talented, learning disabled)” (“Multiple Intelligences 1995, 16). Understanding how to maximize the use of these intelligences will help both the regular and the special populations. Bill Tucker described the influence Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory had upon his teaching: What the theory of multiple intelligences tells us is that, in the river of language, students sometimes swim, sometimes float, sometimes paddle or sail … . For a student whose cognitive profile favors the visual-spatial or other non-verbal intelligences … , it is not enough

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to say, ‘Start writing: it’ll come to you.’ There are better ways to enter the stream.” (Tucker 1995, 27)

Encouraged by Gardner to use a variety of methods to tap into my students’ strengths, I began to construct a number of lesson plans designed to make use of non-verbal intelligences. Although visual literacy and multiple intelligences works may seem only vaguely related to students with Asperger’s, recent writings would suggest their relevancy. Tissot and Evans emphasize the need to use visual strategies to help students suffering from autism (426). Peeters believes “a visual system can compensate for an ineffective verbal system” because a visual system “makes abstract concepts more concrete [and] communicates things that cannot otherwise be understood” (Peeters 1997, 427). Focusing on some of these ideas and techniques can perhaps aid these students, while improving the writing of their classmates as well. For this chapter, I am going to focus on the use of sensory imagery, with the emphasis on visual imagery, as a means of improving the writing of students with Asperger’s. Over the past several years, I have been collecting a variety of advertisements from the print media. These are colorful, and thus attractive to students, and they are carefully designed to send a message. The messages being sent are usually much more complex than simply a means of telling the viewer about the product. I have tried to choose ads that have people or pets interacting, or ads that appeal to one or more of the senses (e.g., steaming coffee cups, waves crashing on to the shore, a velvet evening gown). Then I cut out the written content in the ad. These ads are copied onto overhead transparencies or scanned onto my flash drive to be shown on the classroom screen or computers. The more I work with and collect ads, the more assignments I generate. Many of the assignments are quick, five-minute exercises to help the students unleash their imaginations and encourage them to strive for vivid expressions. Even though these are visual stimuli, the ads can also be used to focus attention on all sensory details. Although I could not present some of the images here due to copyright issues, brief descriptions of their main features will make the connections to the writing assignments clear. For example, one picture I share with my students shows a dog buried in a pile of autumn leaves, with only his head poking out, and his tongue, and a leaf balanced on his white head. The leaf pile is one of several on the lawn, against a backdrop

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of tree trunks and leaves continuing to float down. This picture allows students to focus on the visual sense (find five items in the picture and describe their colors so your readers can “see” the picture in their minds); we could focus student attention on the auditory sense (describe in writing the sound made as the dog moves around in the leaves) or the tactile sense (what differences would you note if you touched first the leaves and then the bark of the tree?). Most students see little need to use descriptive details; they see the picture in their minds and assume the reader can also. By forcing the students to write and share the details, they can enjoy the positive responses of classmates not only in this exercise but when they employ the same skill in their formal writings. Using these skills, students with Asperger’s can be directed to concentrate upon visual details. According to the research, autistic people often need to be directed to focus on individual pieces of the whole. These exercises can serve that purpose while encouraging mainstream students to give their attention to details they too may have missed. These activities illustrate to the students the necessity of being precise if they are to retain reader interest. The activities also focus attention upon a strength of the student with Asperger’s, as described by Grandin above. The reward for all students and the instructor is that the specificity incorporated into the writing makes the final written composition more vivid, and therefore more interesting, to the reader. To demonstrate how to make writing more interesting, I often choose humorous visuals. Students loosen up when they see something that may even be a little silly. I found one picture that always brings smiles to the faces of my students: a dog, belly up, is centered in the foreground. The upper two thirds of the picture shows only pristine snow with a scrawny bare tree on one side and a snow fence in the distance. The dog is engaged in making a snow angel. Questions immediately come to mind. Did the dog rush out into the snow, immediately flop on its back, and begin wallowing around? After all, the snow behind the dog shows no disturbance. Most of us have seen dogs pounce on snow, sniff it, burrow their noses in it—but seeing the dog on her back is unusual. But even that isn’t what the students find humorous. The dog isn’t just rolling around on its back—it’s making a snow angel! Seeing the humorous in the unusual can make our students better viewers, readers, and perhaps even writers.

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A more sophisticated use of this visual would be to discuss focus. The dog only takes up about half the page—the bottom half. Why not center it? Why leave all that blank snow between the dog and the fence? This is a perfect way to make students aware of how our eye is drawn to what is important. Then, we can discuss how to accomplish that in our writing. For example, do all parts of a composition need equal treatment? Where can one place the most significant information to get maximum effect? Recently, I used this same picture in an attempt to teach students about essay introductions. Even the students who have a clear idea of their topic, and who perhaps have even composed a thesis statement, labor over the introduction. We discuss placement of the thesis statement and usually determine that one place to insert a solid thesis statement is at the end of the introduction. I use the picture of the angel-making dog and ask the students about the focus of the picture. Naturally, they answer that the dog draws our attention. So I liken the dog to the thesis statement. (It helps that it’s at the bottom of the page and thus can fit into the “end of the introduction” discussion above.) As I point out that most of the picture above the dog is just white snow with a small tree and a fence, I question why the photographer left that much “useless” space in the picture. If the dog is the thesis statement, why all that blank snow above it? Almost immediately one student will label it “background.” And, again, we discuss the purpose of the background—setting the scene, explaining the significance of the dog’s actions, offering details that give us the bigger picture. We talk about the “blankness” of the upper part of the picture. Then, we connect this concept to the writing of an introduction. From this discussion, I ask for a volunteer to share his or her thesis statement. I write that statement on the board and label it “Dog.” We have the dog, but we don’t have the “background.” For the next ten minutes, students offer ideas for the background. We fill in all that snow with information that will make the reader eager to read the essay. Nothing in this exercise threatens would-be writers. The students take a somewhat silly picture and internalize it as a structure for their writing. In an attempt to delve even further into the image, we continue to refer to our thesis statements as the “Dog.” Meanwhile, we’re working on the rest of the writing process. We tried to liken the dog itself to a completed essay but got bogged down when using the head

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as the introduction (background includes the ears, eyes, nose, and mouth), the body, of course, as the main component of the essay, and the tail as the conclusion. The four legs were used as a webbing type of exercise to find support for the thesis. Sure, it sounds juvenile, but the students liked the side-trip into the humorous—and I wouldn’t call it nonsensical. Another picture may help us discuss focus. Drawing the viewer’s eye to the most significant part of a picture can be related to drawing the reader’s attention to what needs the most attention. In this picture, the background is “busy” but not particularly interesting; it’s mostly scrubby, green foliage. What attracts our eye is the bright red head

Fig. 1: Photo by E. Cunningham

of the bird. This is the reader’s focus. In comparing the visual with written composition, the reader must be able to distinguish between significant information and what is meant to be background or supporting information. The reader is provided with helpful information that focuses attention on what is significant.

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Another advertisement I use demonstrates the visual technique used to focus the viewer’s attention. The picture is of a woman holding a cup of coffee, opening the door to find another cup of steaming coffee placed on the step. This picture is balanced by the potted shrubbery on either side of the door frame. The woman is centered horizontally and almost vertically in the picture, yet the focus is on the cup of coffee placed on the brick sidewalk. Most students, after looking at the picture, can tell us that the woman is looking at the coffee cup on the sidewalk (not the one in her hand). Our eyes are drawn to what draws her eyes. The discussion then becomes, how can we draw the reader’s attention to exactly what we want emphasized? How many details should be included to help the reader focus? For example, we can’t see what’s behind the door, nor do we know where there may be windows on this house. Minimal details are provided—but what is provided is important. I find this particularly useful in discussions with my stu-

Fig. 2: Photo by E. Cunningham

dents. One of the most difficult tasks my students face is summary. They cannot pick out only what is essential to convey the meaning. I usually put a word count limit on summaries because I know some of the students’ summaries will be as long as the original. This exercise can help make them aware of the effectiveness of only including what is interesting and necessary.

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Even though the above example is carefully cropped for maximum effect, it is not necessary to leave out what could be important details. This picture of two cats lying in the middle of a cluttered sunroom allows the reader to sift through the miscellaneous items and focus upon the cats. They draw our attention because they are perched on an old desk, basking in the sun. The light draws our attention to the cats rather than focusing our attention on what else is inside or outside the sunroom. Another helpful activity involves showing my students how to understand nuances. Since people with Asperger’s Syndrome have often been described as being unable to “read” people through their expressions, this next exercise might be particularly beneficial to them. I provide my students with a black and white ad picturing a young woman looking directly into the camera. Her facial features could be communicating a variety of emotions. An older, working class man is blurred in the background. Depending upon what written expression is emphasized, the following quick exercises could help students to notice significant details, assess the mood of the character, create a monologue, or invent character conflict. For example: 1. List ten adjectives that would allow your reader to understand what this young woman is thinking. 2. Write the thoughts of this young woman. 3. Imagine a conflict she is experiencing. Is the character in the background part of that conflict? Describe the choices she might have that would solve or alleviate the problem. Careful observation of the picture could also lead to a discussion of the significance of color—or the lack thereof. This particular picture is in black and white, although it does have a yellow border around it. How does the absence of color affect our impression of her thoughts? Why would the creator of this picture deliberately choose to avoid color? How could we establish the same mood in words? This can lead to a discussion of appropriate word choices. Words set the mood. The students brainstorm words that would be appropriate for describing this picture (e.g., dark, shadowy, faded, gray, dingy, subdued). Then we look at the picture and verbalize why these words would be appropriate to convey the look on the young woman’s face. And, conversely, I ask why splashes of color would mute the effect of this black and white picture. This is a revelation for most students who believe that no one wants to view black and white pictures—black and white was used

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only in films that were produced before color technology was invented. All students can participate in this exercise; it not only encourages the visual learners but helps establish community in the classroom. The black-and-white effect can be compared and contrasted to the effect of this picture. Students can see that black and white would not be nearly as effective as having this picture in color. Even though the picture is in color, the colors by no means detract from the mood expressed. Different shades of green along with the browns and the whites contribute to the setting and the mood, and do not distract from the message being conveyed to the viewer. The exuberant laugh-

Fig. 3: Photo by E. Cunningham

ter of the woman and the expression on the dog’s face automatically bring smiles to my students’ faces. Juxtaposing this picture with the one previously described leads to a discussion of how similar effects can be achieved in written composition. Another way to focus student attention upon details while continuing to teach a larger concept is to use visual images when discussing comparison and contrast assignments. Most students have difficulty understanding they must focus on the same detail on both sides of the issue. For example, by using close-ups of two women, we can ask students to compare and contrast: (a) eyes (color, shape); (b) noses, (c) lips, (d) hair (color, length, texture), (e) faces (shape, color), and even eyebrows or eyelashes. The significance is the students are asked

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to choose several features to compare and contrast; they are being challenged to compare apples to apples. (Depending on the students, pictures of two different automobiles might be more appreciated in this type of exercise.) For a more sophisticated group of students, the comparison and contrast pictures could be pairs—a woman with brown eyes and brownish highlighted hair positioned opposite a picture of a puppy with brown eyes and an auburn coat. Or, women from two different milk commercials—I have positioned tennis star Serena Williams beside “Today Show” host Meredith Vieira, both with milk mustaches. The similarities and differences are immediately obvious to the students as they discuss clothing, skin color, hair length, and milk mustache. If the students can grasp the simple concept of comparing and contrasting through these exercises, they are better able to extrapolate to larger issues. I realize that our composition courses’ formal assignments usually lend themselves to the academic voice; the creative voice often isn’t encouraged. Nevertheless, using exercises that focus attention upon more visual, and often more creative, images can make the students aware of nuances they otherwise might have missed. At the same time, it does help them understand that the academic voice also includes creative word choices and expressions without sacrificing serious content. This is an important learning experience for all students of written composition. In many of the above exercises, I have made no specific mention of students with Asperger’s. They perhaps would struggle with a couple of these activities, but no more so than many of the other students in our classes. Actually, the students with Asperger’s might excel to the point they would be helping their classmates. The research has shown that a major problem experienced by those diagnosed with Asperger’s is reading and responding to social cues (Safran 2002, 60). These exercises tend to level the playing field by allowing students with Asperger’s to focus on humor, details, and social dynamics, and to share their insights with their classmates. All of the students are thus encouraged to articulate astute observations regarding similarities and differences in visuals. Although I have focused upon the visual (spatial) approach to helping students diagnosed with Asperger’s, some other educators may be making use of other intelligences. As Cynthia Evans states, “Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory (1983) allows us to celebrate

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the richness of our students who manifest musical, logical, and spatial gifts” (Evans 1995, 64). Certainly, similar exercises could be used to encourage students who learn better aurally or kinesthetically. Whether we use recordings of various sounds or simply ask students to recreate sounds in writing, we are playing to the strengths of the aural learner. Whether we bring in materials of varying textures or ask students to recreate in writing how each feels, we encourage the student who learns best kinesthetically. In making use of such exercises, we can reach all students, not just those with special needs. While we are using these exercises to improve students’ writing skills, we are also establishing a safe community for all students. Joan S. Safran reports, “With average to superior intellectual capacity, the child with Asperger’s looks typical but lacks the social awareness and skills needed to connect with his or her world” (2002, 60). The visual learner can become the leader in the community when we make an attempt to play to those strengths. Even so, none of these exercises need to be seen as specifically directed toward students diagnosed with Asperger’s. As Howard Gardner told us nearly twenty years ago, all students learn differently. We must assess their needs and adjust our teaching methods accordingly. If that means creatively encouraging students to use their senses to become more proficient writers who are able to use an authentic voice, then we will have served all of our students well.

References Centers for Disease Control. 2009. Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders—Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, United States. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5910a1.htm. Evans, Cynthia. 1995. Access, equity, and intelligence: Another look at tracking. English Journal Dec. : 63-65. Ferguson, Roy, and Jon Shorr. 1972-73. Milford Visual Communications Project. Gardner, Howard. 1993. Multiple intelligences: the theory in practice. New York: Basic Books. ———. 1995. Multiple intelligences as a catalyst. English Journal Dec. : 16-18.

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———. 1993. The unschooled mind: how children think and how schools should teach. New York: Basic Books. Grandin, Temple. 2007. Choosing the right job for people with autism or Asperger’s Syndrome. Center for the study of autism: 1-4. 25 Jan. 2007. http://www.autism.org/temple/jobs.html. Peeters, T. 1997. Teaching children with autism: strategies to enhance communication and socialization. San Diego: Singular Pub. Group. Tissot, Catherine, and Roy Evans. 2003. Visual teaching strategies for children with autism. Early Child Development and Care 173 (2003): 425-433. Tucker, Bill. 1995. Minds of their own: visualizers compose. English Journal Dec. : 27-31.

8 “Well, Not Exactly”: Asperger’s and the Integration of Outside Sources

Jennifer McClinton-Temple

A

my is a natural, lyrical, entertaining writer. Her vocabulary far surpasses the average college student, let alone the average student at our small, Catholic liberal arts college in Northeastern Pennsylvania. She is the daughter of two long-time public school teachers, and words, sentences, paragraphs, and books have long been an important part of her life. She is comfortable in different genres; her poetry has won awards, her blog has attracted a wide audience, and she writes beautiful, heartfelt non-fiction, the kind that is usually called creative nonfiction these days. However, there is one writing task that stops Amy cold: the integration of outside sources, any outside sources, from traditional scholarly sources used for a research paper, to quoting individuals with whom she has conducted interviews. This is true whether she is trying to paraphrase or quote directly. In an e-mail message to the author on March 6, 2006, Amy wrote, “When I have to incorporate sources, I get overwhelmed because if the source doesn’t say exactly what it is I want/need it to say, then I won’t use it.” After two years and six classes together, beginning with composition, Amy and I have developed some useful strategies for dealing with this roadblock and have both come to believe that the root of the difficulty may lie with characteristics of the Asperger’s Syndrome with which Amy was diagnosed at the age of ten. Using the words of others is never simple, for anyone. All teachers of writing are aware of this truth. When we discuss using outside sources in classes like Composition and Advanced Composition, we tend to focus on a few basic ideas: where to find sources, how to evaluate them, when to use them in a paper, and how to use them.

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The search for sources and the subsequent evaluations of them may be difficult for students, but instruction on how to accomplish these tasks can be relatively straightforward. Knowing when and how to use sources in a paper is, however, a challenging, sophisticated skill, the nature of which can change depending on several factors: the genre, the audience, even the length of the paper. It’s impossible for teachers to write down instructions that will tell students, without fail, when sources are needed and how they should be used. To learn this task, students must own their own writing; they must be willing to evaluate the situation itself in order to answer questions like these: Do I need backup from an expert here? How about counterarguments from an opponent? Do I need an anecdote to illustrate my point? Should I paraphrase or quote directly? Teachers can’t answer these questions without seeing the text(s) in question, and since, let’s face it, we aren’t normally with our students at 4:00 a.m. the night before the paper is due, students must answer these questions themselves. For students with Asperger’s, with their intense need for clarity and instruction, these questions can be paralyzing. In addition, when we talk to students about outside sources, we tend to spend a fair amount of time talking about plagiarism: what it is and how to avoid doing it. But since, as Margaret Price notes, “plagiarism is not stable,” there is a great deal of ambiguity included in this conversation. While it’s easy to tell students “don’t cut and paste; cutting and pasting is wrong,” it’s harder to explain to them what might be called the grey areas of plagiarism. Price argues that “what we think of as plagiarism shifts across historical time periods, across cultures, across workplaces, even across academic disciplines” (Price 2002, 90). She goes on to discuss some of these grey areas, including “facts and common knowledge” which she points out are context-dependent. In other words, where they require citation and where they do not depends on the audience and the assumptions the writer is making about that audience’s knowledge base. Price also addresses the concept of who “owns” words and ideas. Here, her questions center partly on collaboration and peer revision. For instance, if a peer reviewer has new ideas for the direction a paper should take, should he or she be cited? What if the reviewer rewrites a line or a paragraph? (Price 2002, 95). Common sense tells us “no,” but try explaining why to a student, let alone to a literal-minded student with Asperger’s.

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Understanding the fuzzy areas of plagiarism can be difficult for any student, but simply using sources can still be a serious problem for the Asperger’s writer. From the outset, paraphrasing can be practically impossible. Given the traditional definition of paraphrasing, “putting an idea into your own words,” this task may not even make sense to students like Amy. It’s very hard for her to understand why she would even want to put something into her own words if it was well-written in the first place. She says that paraphrasing, to her, is a “technical” or “analytical” task, and that it’s a matter of “processing a message and spitting it [back] out in different terms” (Ruth, e-mail, March 6, 2006). Note that she uses the word “spitting” here to imply that it’s a mechanical task, not an intellectual or creative one. This expression fits poorly with her concept of how it feels to use words that are truly her own, from beginning to end, about which she says, “I love putting things into my own words … . I believe that what I have to say, and the way in which I say it, are integral to making a paper a good paper” (Ruth, e-mail, March 1, 2006). Even direct quotation can be a problem, because, as Amy says above, “if a source doesn’t say exactly what I want/need it to say, then I won’t use it.” This might seem quite reasonable on the surface, until we consider exactly what Amy means by “exactly.” For instance, Amy once wrote a paper in my Advanced Composition class on the late 1990s revival of the musical Cabaret. The first part of the paper, where she explains the evolution of the musical from the play I am a Camera, through the more famous movie version starring Liza Minnelli, is full of quotes. Amy is no slouch at research, and this part of the paper works very well. The second part of the paper, however, seems to completely forget the research component of the assignment. The difference, although not apparent in the paper, is that Amy has no strong opinions about the earlier incarnations of Cabaret, but feels very strongly about the most recent one. In this section, she quotes no reviews, which weakens the paper considerably. Although reviews of the production were almost universally laudatory, Amy is uncomfortable using them. For instance, where some reviewers said lead actor Alan Cumming’s M.C. foregrounded a sexuality that was “crude” and “sinister,” (in praise, mind you, of Cumming’s Tony Award-winning performance) Amy is having none of that. She will admit that his emcee is “more realized as a sexual being” (Ruth 2003, 3) than Joel Grey’s famous interpretation of the role, but because she would never say the

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emcee was crude, well, that review is out. Since all of the reviews of this show had a slightly different take on it than did Amy, they were all, eventually, out. There is no question that Amy’s strong feelings on this topic contributed to the problems here, but given how much we encourage students to write about topics in which they are interested, especially in the composition classroom, the rejection of sources could be a problem for other students with Asperger’s as well. These problems with outside sources can be directly related to Amy’s Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) diagnosis. Although there is little research on Autism Spectrum Disorders and writing, some of the classic behaviors can easily be seen as affecting the writing ability of these students. First, people with Asperger’s tend to interpret language literally, focusing on what the words are, rather than what the speaker or writer might mean by the words. Metaphor, tone, voice, and other nuances of language often get lost for the Asperger’s reader. These challenges, coupled with the tendency to over-focus on details and errors, can make the incorporation of outside sources take days, sometimes even weeks for students to surmount. Again, in Amy’s own words, “I pretty much agonize over formatting issues and double-check to make sure that the source material I’m using fits with the flow of the paper and with the ideas/concepts presented around it … .I’ve had a tendency to be extremely picky about the sources I use because I want to make 175% sure that what I’m trying to say is coming across correctly” (Ruth e-mail, March 6, 2006). I want to elaborate on how that “agonizing” could sometimes manifest itself. While it’s true that Amy, like many people with Asperger’s, has trouble with time management, there was something far greater at work here than simple procrastination. Amy could spend hours, literally hours, going back and forth between a source and the computer screen in an attempt to use a quote. She would sometimes work in the office of my colleague, our Coordinator of Disability Services, and more than once my colleague witnessed Amy going through this process. Another problem has to do with the profound importance of context when using outside sources. Routine and consistency are cornerstones for most people with Asperger’s. The more routine and consistent an activity is, the easier it is for them to get it done. In fact, many people with AS use “scripts” to get them through certain tasks. It’s difficult for an instructor to write a script for a research assignment without doing

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the research for the student. Part of what we are trying to teach when we teach a research paper, or even a profile that incorporates quotes, involves weighing appropriateness, value, credibility—all of which are so context-dependent. For instance, I usually teach a paper in my composition classes called a profile: the students pick an interesting person, place, or hobby on campus or in the area and profile it. Amy profiled a comic-books store near campus; her angle was “comic book stores are not what you might think they are.” She had no trouble coming up with interview questions and interviewing the proprietor and patrons of the shop. However, when it came time to use those quotes in the paper, trouble struck. For example, in the section of her profile where she discussed the impression that comic book stores might cater to young men, she had a very difficult time allowing herself to use the quotes she had gathered. Here’s the paragraph she wound up with: I asked Al if there was anything in the store for girls, anything that went beyond the stereotypical “guy” stuff. “We have both a male and female readership here,” says Al. “Comic books have become much more realistic in recent years, in both the storylines and the illustrations. There are many more female images in comics, strong females. The characters are drawn in a much more anatomically correct fashion—the era of ‘big muscles, big boobs, big guns’ is ending. The storylines no longer rely on how the characters are drawn.” Female characters in comic books are no longer mere “damsels in distress”, whose job it is to sit around, look pretty, and be rescued by the handsome, strapping male hero. This change has made comics more accessible and desirable to a female audience, which, in turn, allows a store such as Phoenix to thrive. (Ruth 2005, 3)

This is a good paragraph, I think, and it does the work Amy wants it to. Getting there, however, was hard work, for Amy and for me. First of all, she had a hard time understanding the need to quote Al on the question of whether or not he has female patrons. Her perspective was that he obviously did because Amy is a female and she goes to the store and she has seen other women there. It was difficult for her to process why those facts were not sufficient. In addition, because Amy doesn’t necessarily view comic book women of the past such as Wonder Woman and X-men’s Storm as weak, she had a great deal of trouble with Al’s assertion that now comic book women are strong. Amy has a hard time with generalization, and generalization is often called for in writing.

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So Amy has a hard time with the concepts of plagiarism, paraphrasing, and direct quotation. I taught Amy in Advanced Composition, Writing for the Web, Editing, and Literary Journalism—so we had several opportunities to deal with these problems. First, I’ll discuss the plagiarism and the paraphrasing problems together. Asking Amy to put something into her own words can have a chilling effect. She can literally sit for hours, unable to type a word. However, if given a specific, separate assignment, to summarize a piece of text, she can do it. To summarize, you must distill, condense, and explain the main points of a piece. You must, in effect, put things into your own words. As long as that particular phrase is not part of the assignment, Amy can work with this. This requires, of course, that she have guidance that involves the actual sources. For instance, in once writing a paper on fan fiction, the largely internet-driven genre in which fans continue the storylines of their favorite books, films, and television series, I asked her to give some space in the paper to why fans are compelled to write this way. She and I had both read the book Textual Poachers by Henry Jenkins (Routledge 1992) and she had also sent out questions to a listserv for fan-fiction writers to which she subscribes. I asked her, as two separate assignments, to summarize Jenkins’ argument and to summarize the answers of her listserv mates. I did not, and this is crucial, ask her to put anything into her own words. I gave her instructions to not look at either of the texts while writing her summaries, forcing her to use her own words. She was also specifically forbidden to use direct quotation. Then, she brought these sources and summaries to my office and we looked them over together, making sure that there was no inadvertent use of the source’s exact words. On every occasion we tried this approach, we were successful. Obviously, this approach is time consuming, as it requires the instructor to physically check the sources, but it’s an approach that can easily be adapted to use in a Writing Center or with a tutor. In addition, with repetition, students with Asperger’s can learn to craft summaries of smaller and smaller chunks of writing and ultimately, those summaries become paraphrases. For the problem with direct quotes, Amy and I developed a system using hypertext that worked very well. Amy keeps a blog, and in this blog, she often links to other texts. When you are reading a blog, you sometimes, depending on the software and the browser, will pass your cursor over a hyperlink and see the words, “link outside this blog.” When Amy conceives of the text of a direct quote as being “outside

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this blog” so to speak, she is able to overcome her quotation difficulties. She is able to better understand the need to quote, for instance, because blogs often reference other writers, multiple writers even, simply to create a kind of critical mass. To go back to the comic book example, for instance, a blogger might link to two or three different sites that reference women in comic book stores, and that would be perfectly conventional. In addition, even if she doesn’t agree with every word, every nuance of the quote, well, that’s ok, because it’s “outside this blog.” I actually helped Amy construct some of her work using html, so that she could provide hyperlinks to the quotes, which was much more comfortable for her. Eventually, she would translate these hyperlinks into the actual quotes, and paste them into her paper. This approach was helped by the fact that Amy is very comfortable with computers, as are many people with Asperger’s—as computers mediate the social interaction that can be so daunting for them. Since many college students with Asperger’s gravitate toward computer science, this solution would most likely have broad appeal. With Asperger’s students and the use of outside sources, it’s important for classroom teachers to remember that their difficulty probably doesn’t stem from procrastination, as it might seem on the surface, but instead from a kind of paralysis that is difficult, if not impossible for them to overcome on their own.

References Price, Margaret. 2002. Beyond “Gotcha!”: Situating Plagiarism in Policy and Pedagogy. College Composition and Communication 54 (1): 90. Ruth, Amy Louise. 2003. The New Cabaret. Unpublished essay, King’s College. ———. 2005. Not Your Grandfather’s Comic Shop. Unpublished essay, King’s College.

about the authors Muriel Cunningham, M.Ed. (Xavier University) retired in June 2010 after 40 years teaching writing. She was an assistant professor at University of Cincinnati for seven years, during which time she taught students served by the Center for Access and Transition; she was an adjunct at Miami University of Ohio for three years. Before coming to higher education, Muriel taught high school English for 30 years—the later years in courses mainstreaming students with disabilities. Kimberly Freeman, Ph.D. (University of Connecticut) has taught writing and literature classes for 20 years at the college level. She has presented papers on writing and pedagogy at numerous conferences, including CCCC and NeMLA. Currently, she teaches writing at Northeastern University, where she is also Interim Director of Advanced Writing in the Disciplines. Her publications include articles in a/b: Autobiography Studies, American Literary Realism, and the monograph Love American Style: Divorce in the American Novel, 1881-1976 (Routledge, 2001). Val Gerstle, Ph.D. (University of Cincinnati) has spent many years teaching Basic English and Freshman English at University of Cincinnati, and has been published in The House of Your Dream: an International Collection of Prose Poetry, The Best of the Prose Poem: an International Journal, and over 40 literary magazines. Val also has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and a B.F.A. in Fine Arts. She lives in Cincinnati with her significant other and his autistic son. April Mann M.A. (University of Miami) teaches first-year writing at the University of Miami, where she is a senior lecturer and the director of the Writing Center.  Her son’s Asperger’s Syndrome diagnosis at age three let to her original interest in the topic while her professional interests in autism can be seen through her conference presentations on topics such as autobiographical definitions of autism and contested first-person representations of autism. 

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Jennifer McClinton-Temple, Ph.D. (University of Oklahoma), is Associate Professor of English at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. She has taught writing at the college level for 20 years, including developmental writing, composition, technical writing, and editing. She is the editor of Themes in Literature (Facts on File, 2011). Cheryl Olman, Ph.D. (University of Minnesota) is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Radiology at the University of Minnesota.  She uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study human visual information processing and has worked at the intersection of visual processing and neurodiversity, particularly schizophrenia.  She has published in numerous journals such as Cognitive Science, NeuroImage, and the Journal of Neurophysiology. Dr. Olman seeks to improve the accuracy of the techniques we use to correlate “bright spots on the brain” with human behaviors. Marcia Ribble, Ph.D. (Michigan State University), a retired Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati, taught college composition for 26 years, including six years as Basic Writing faculty in the UC Center for Access and Transition. In 2008, she persuaded the editors of the Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Basic Writing to include annotations of books and articles on autism for the first time. At Saginaw Valley State University she won the prestigious Mary Anderson Teaching Award. Dr. Ribble published “Teaching Basic Writing to High Risk Students” in English Studies: Learning Climates that Cultivate Racial and Ethnic Diversity, AAHE and NCTE, 2002. Lynda Walsh, Ph.D. (University of Texas at Austin) is Associate Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno. From 20032008, she was Writing Program Coordinator at a technical university where over four percent of the first-year cohort presented diagnoses of Autism Spectrum Disorders. She currently teaches a range of writing courses and conducts research on the rhetoric of science and wired pedagogies. Her publications include research articles in Written Communication, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and the Journal of Business and Technical Communication. In 2006 she published Sins

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Against Science: The Scientific Hoaxes of Poe, Twain, and Others with SUNY Press. Katherine V. Wills, Ph.D. (University of Louisville) has served as Assistant Professor of English at Indiana University Purdue University-Columbus, where she has taught composition and creative writing since 2002. In 2007, Wills and her co-editors received the Best New Collection in Technical and Scientific Writing by National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) for the collection Critical Power Tools: Technical Communication and Cultural Studies (SUNY, 2006). She has published over 20 journal articles and chapters while disseminating her research findings and pedagogical practices in over 60 presentations.

Index A Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 8, 38, 43, 64 art projects 99–100, 110, 114, 116 Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) 11, 30, 45, 47–50, 52–62, 64–9, 71, 89–91, 94–8, 140 Autism Genome Project (AGP) 17 Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) 7–11, 15–19, 23, 25, 30, 32, 35–6, 38–9, 45–6, 48–9, 51–2, 56–8, 62–4, 66, 68–70, 74–84, 96, 101, 103, 105, 111–12, 117, 121, 123 adults diagnosed with 15, 19, 21–3, 25, 28, 30, 50, 53, 84, 118, 121 anxiety in 18, 58, 65, 99, 101, 103 attention in 25–6, 40, 59, 91, 94, 103, 111, 114, 121, 127–31, 133–4 auditory processing in 18, 28, 128 brain structure and function in 19, 76–7, 80, 82–3, 85–6 brain structure and function in 19, 21–2, 24, 62, 75–83, 100 children diagnosed with 15, 21, 26, 33, 54, 67, 125, 135 development in 17, 33, 43, 55 empathy in 67, 69–70, 72, 76, 80, 83 eye contact in 18, 20, 27, 29, 49, 57, 121 genetics of 17, 72 humor and 10, 58, 60, 99, 103, 134

language and 19, 24, 49, 59–60, 75–8, 80–2, 84–5, 94–5, 98–9, 126, 140 motivation and 54, 101, 119 negative biases and 103 positive reinforcement and 18, 39, 42, 55, 60, 65, 67, 100, 102, 128 reading and 11, 19–21, 25–6, 28, 39, 41–2, 49–50, 56, 60, 63, 75–7, 80, 82, 84, 86, 90, 93–4, 100, 102, 114, 129, 132, 134, 142 research in 7–8, 10, 17–18, 23, 32–3, 35–6, 43, 47, 52, 66, 72, 75–6, 80, 82–3, 95–6, 114, 123, 128, 134, 137, 139–40 sensitivities in 41, 58, 70, 115–16, 121 social challenges with 8, 10, 15, 18, 20, 24, 29–30, 36–7, 43, 45–9, 52–5, 57–62, 65, 67, 69, 75–6, 80, 90–1, 93, 95–6, 99, 101, 121, 134–5, 143 sudden increase in diagnoses of 7, 15–17, 23, 45, 54, 66–7, 80, 125 visual processing and 10, 23–4, 28, 64, 71–2, 99, 101, 103, 111, 115, 120, 124–8, 130, 133–5 anxiety in ASD (see Autism Spectrum Disorders [ASD], anxiety in)

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attention span in ASD (see Autism Spectrum Disorders [ASD], attention in)

B Brueggemann, Brenda Jo 36, 44, 71–2, 89, 97–8

C

F Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) 10, 75–85

G Grandin, Temple 18–20, 23–4, 28, 30–2, 46, 63, 66, 68, 71, 75, 89, 99–100, 121, 124, 128, 135 Gray, Carol 24 group work (see teaching methods, composition, for students with ASD, group work)

Centers for Disease Control (CDC) 7, 11, 16, 18, 30, 32, 75, 85, 124, 135 college composition 7–10, 16, 18, 26, 35–7, 41, 43, 50–2, 54, 56, 66, I 71–2, 76–7, 79, 81–4, 92, 94–6, interview, student. See  Student 99, 101, 123, 128–30, 133–4, narrative; See  Student narrative 137, 140–1 basic writing 9, 15, 19, 99, 101 J disabilities and 9, 15, 18, 27, 30–1, 33, 35–8, 41–4, 47–9, job training 23 51, 60, 62, 64–6, 69, 71–3, 84, 90, 95–8, 101, 121, L 123–4 first-year 8, 25, 35–6, 56 learning environment 7, 40, 63, 65, 70, 84, 102, 116, 123, 126 composition classroom 43 learning styles 26, 28 accommodations 35, 41–2 collaborative groups 39–41 Lewiecki-Wilson, Cynthia 37, 44, disability studies 36 71–3 feedback 39 multi-step projects 40 M strategies (see teaching methods, memory 19, 21–4, 28, 40, 55, 82, composition, for students 84–5 with ASD) motivation in students with ASD E (see Autism Spectrum Disorders [ASD], motivation and) empathy in ASD (see Autism Spectrum Disorders [ASD], empathy in)

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N negative biases and ASD (see Autism Spectrum Disorders [ASD], negative biases and) Non-verbal Learning Disorders (NLD/ NVLD) 35, 71

O Obsessive Compulsive Disorders (OCD) 8, 35–6, 90

P Palmieri, Jason 37, 43 pedagogy (see teaching methods, composition, for students with ASD) Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD) 33, 46

P reading and ASD (see Autism Spectrum Disorders [ASD], reading and)

S sensitivity to sensory stimuli in ASD (see Autism Spectrum Disorders [ASD], sensitivities in) Shaughnessy, Mina 19, 33 Snyder, Sharon 37, 43–4 social skills and ASD (see Autism Spectrum Disorders [ASD], social challenges with) student narrative 38

T teaching methods, institutional 42 physical 41 technological 42 teaching methods, composition, for students with ASD 8, 10, 15, 27, 30, 35–8, 40–1, 43, 50–4, 56, 67, 76, 80–1, 84, 91–2, 97, 101–2, 111, 114, 119, 135 advertisements 10, 127 cartoons 10, 99–100, 102–5, 108–9, 111, 114, 116–17, 119–21 complex tasks 7, 40, 83–4 feedback 39, 42 freewriting 102, 114 group work 9–10, 16, 18–20, 57, 76, 81, 91, 97, 101–2, 104–5, 111, 113–14, 121, 133, 138 handouts 114 handwriting 100 Internet 119 physicality and 22, 37–8, 42–3, 49, 57, 62–4, 69 revision 23, 65, 102, 138 using sources 11, 84, 137–40, 142–3 technology 42, 65, 133 testing 26, 47 Theory of Mind 80, 86 tutors, writing (see writing centers, tutors)

U Universal Design for Learning (UDL) 26–7, 46, 48, 50, 66, 80, 84–5

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V visual processing and ASD (see Autism Spectrum Disorders [ASD], visual processing and)

W Wilson, James C. 37, 44, 93, 98 writing assistance (See also composition classroom) writing centers 43, 46–53, 56–73 tutors 18, 25–8, 42, 46–8, 50–1, 53, 56–65, 70–1, 113, 124, 142